Thanks to the support of several sponsors, including the Gainesville
Section of the IEEE, the University of Florida sent seven students and a
faculty advisor to participate in AUVSI and ONR's Seventh International
Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition from July 28th through August
1, 2004.  This annual competition was held at the Space and Naval
Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, California.

UF’s autonomous submarine, SubjuGator, was an entirely new sub from what
we designed and used in previous years.  The 2004 SubjuGator team was
composed of 4 graduate students and 3 undergraduates, with only two
returning student members from the previous team.

The 2004 SubjuGator was designed to operate underwater at depths up to
16 feet. Its motor orientations were configured to maximize mobility.
SubjuGator was controlled through a single-board Pentium3 based computer
running the Linux operating system, which was interfaced to the motors
through a microcontroller and to cameras through an IEEE1394 connection.
Onboard sensors included a digital compass, a fluidic inclinometer, and
a pressure sensor. Additionally, mission specific sensors included two
high-resolution cameras and a hydrophone system.

The competition involved going through a starting gate, finding a target
(using vision), dropping two markers on the target, and surfacing in a
recovery zone (using hydrophones).

Our team placed seventh out of 18 teams.  Some of the other teams
included MIT, Cornell, Duke, Virginia Tech, the University of Southern
California, and two teams from outside the USA.

The students all commented on how much they had learned in the process
of design, building, testing and demonstrating our autonomous submarine.
  Two of the students have since graduated; one is now employed at
Honeywell and the other is working with a small consulting firm.  Two of
the students have since entered UF’s Ph.D. program, another will enter
the master’s program in the fall, and the last two are still undergraduates.

Thanks again to the Gainesville section of IEEE for there financial
support of the 2004 Team SubjuGator!

More information on the SubjuGator project is available at
http://subjugator.org/.  Specific information about the 2004 SubjuGator
is available at http://subjugator.org/comp7_main.html .

Dr. Eric M. Schwartz
SubjuGator Faculty Advisor
Associate Director, Machine Intelligence Laboratory
Senior Lecturer, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering