2011 CUAUV Team in front of Duffield Hall

The Cornell University Autonomous Underwater Vehicle team designs and builds AUVs for competition and research. Our team and vehicle have received serious attention from various industry members because of their performance and flexibility.

One of our team's objectives is the AUVSI/ONR Underwater Vehicle competition, held each year in San Diego, California. We are a long time competitor and have a tradition of excellence. Our 2010 competition vehicle, Tachyon, took first place out of 27 international teams at the competition this past summer. While our team has placed in the top ten every year, this past year was the third time that we've won the overall competition. The team has also placed 1st in technical design for the last nine years.

This engineering team offers a unique opportunity for students to gain experience working in a cross-disciplinary project environment. CUAUV is entirely undergraduate run and operated, and consists of 39 students representing 10 majors and 3 colleges from Cornell University. The challenges of building a robotic submarine serve as a hands on complement to the world class education we receive at Cornell.

As our vehicle's hardware and software platforms mature, we are constantly looking for novel ways to use our AUVs in real world applications. This summer, we are running macrophyte growth surveys in Cayuga lake as a part of the Floating Classroom Project off of the M/V Haendel for the second year running. The visual and temperature data we collect gives a snapshot of plant growth and temperature profiles throughout the summer.  We have a gallery of pictures from our lake tests.

Learn more about:

• The Subgroups
• The Advisors
• The Team History

Interested in joining CUAUV? See CUAUV Recruiting.

For advice for new teams, see CUAUV's Advice for Teams page