The University of Victoria's autonomous underwater vehicle won its engineering team the top prize for innovative design and technical excellence at the Canadian Engineering Competition in Saskatoon earlier in March. (Courtesy of AUVic)

For each of the last five years, engineering students at the University of Victoria have built a submersible robot called an autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, capable of completing intelligent tasks without aid from human operators. Like other AUVs, it can move through oceans and seas with the help of its four thrusters and a navigation system that guides it through trouble. But what is unique about the compact AUV from Victoria is that it can also double as a remote-operated vehicle, or ROV, capable of performing complex mechanical tasks.

The new design and contributions from over 40 corporate sponsors allowed the AUVic team — led by students Matt Burdyny, Dave Shea and Will Fraser — to win two top prizes at the Canadian Engineering Competition earlier this month: one for innovative design and the other for technical excellence. The robot's versatility will be put to the test this summer, as it will be entered in both an ROV competition in St. John's and an AUV competition in San Diego.

All it needs now is a name, said team captain Matt Burdyny, who spoke to CBC News Online about the robot's unique capabilities.

How is this design different from submersible robots used today?

The big thing for us is size. Our vehicle only weighs 20 kilograms. For its size, we have the most technologically advanced vehicle in the world. Now that's a bold statement to make and the big reason why we've been able to do this is because our corporate partners have given us some of their prototype equipment to use in the machine. For example, there is one component on the vehicle called a Doppler Velocity Log that weighs only four kilograms. Last year that same piece weighed 14 kilograms all by itself.

Most of the time when companies want to deploy their vehicle it costs them $30,000 a day to charter a boat and get a crane to lower it in the water. Our vehicle can be deployed by a single man from a pleasure craft.

Another thing we pride ourselves on and push for is true intelligence; where the vehicle actually makes the decisions and processing on its own. In the industry right now there are AUVs that record the data and then all the processing is done off board once the vehicle comes back. So say it's underwater and it finds an underwater mountain range, it can make a decision on its own based on its programming and go and do all of the mapping and record the data as well.

It also has the ability to manipulate objects as well. We have a grabber arm so it can do tasks underwater. Right now they have AUVs that inspect and ROVs that do the work — ours does both.

What's involved in building one of these robots?

There are three main areas of expertise: the mechanical, electrical and software. The mechanical team has to create a design to house all of the components, be watertight and to stand up to pressure when you go down to 3,000 metres. Next, the electrical side takes all the readings from the sensors and connects it to the computer. We have about 10 off-the-shelf [computer] boards in there as well as a couple of custom boards that allow us to communicate between the motors and the rest of the computer boards. With the software design we take the data from all of these different sources and make sense of it. And all of that information is put into a control system that makes decisions from all the subprograms on what the robot sees and hears.

What kind of tasks can it perform?

There are different things it can do. At an underwater pipeline or offshore oilrig you can send the vehicle along the pipeline and if it detects an area that may need further investigation or repair you can mark it with a small little beacon. Or you can do underwater imaging with sonar so you can actually plot out entire harbours.

We believe we've hit a very niche market because we're offering true intelligence in a small package, something that can get into things like a flooded mine that larger vehicles can't manoeuvre in.

How do you communicate with it?

If we want to have active communication with the vehicle when it's in the water we do need a tether from the vehicle to the shore station. The tether is a fibre-optic tether — very light and very small, so it minimizes the drag. But we only need to use the tether if we want to have real-time data displayed back to us on our boat or shore station or be able to say, "OK, we've decided to change our mission, we want to do this instead" and reprogram it or take the joystick and manually drive it around.

But it can run on its own without active, real-time communication. The only downside is you cannot communicate wirelessly through water, so if the robot isn't tethered it has to resurface for us to communicate that way.

Is there any anxiety when it goes underwater for those solo missions?

It always makes you nervous when you put a couple hundred thousand dollars in the water. You think as it disappears, "Hopefully we'll see you soon." A lot of people have had AUVs go missing. That's a risk you take. Extensive testing is the only thing you can do to ensure it will perform.

Of all the projects you and your classmates could work on, why an underwater robot? What's the appeal?

Over 73 per cent of the Earth's surface is covered by water and I've heard many people say we know more about the surface of the moon than we do the depths of the ocean. Here in Victoria we're surrounded by water and nobody really knows what is down there. So to be able to see down onto the ocean floor and get to places people couldn't go before is really exciting, and to be able to do it all with a robot that does it intelligently takes it to a whole new level.

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