8th Annual AUV Competition Results

An anonymous reader writes "This weekend the 8th Annual Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Competition was held in San Diego. This year teams were challenged to complete three tasks including finding a docking station, inspecting a pipeline, and surfacing in a recovery zone marked by an acoustic pinger. Teams from MIT, Cornell, Duke and sixteen others competed for the grand prize. After an intense final round, the University of Florida's Team SubjuGator dethroned MIT and walked away with the victory. Interestingly, the UF team ran Windows XP on their embedded computer."

In last place

[Anonymous Coward]

And in last place, it's the British Autosub Project [hero.ac.uk], last seen early 2005 somewhere under the the Fimbul Ice Shelf.

Re:XP Embedded

[bedroll]

Obviously XP has better hardware support. I just look for the submarine with the Windows logo on it at Best Buy.

Re:Windows XP

[Anonymous Coward]

What, no linux? How did this get through? Again, a proof that the editors don't read the full submissions before approving them.

When something goes wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it show the Blue Screen of Depth?

Re:BSOD

[hungrygrue]

Nah, you could only get to 70 MPH for the first couple weeks. Being a Windows machine, it would start getting slower and slower... and slower over time. Eventually, the NY Times would run a story suggesting that throwing out your year old car and buying a new one (also running Windows, of course) makes good financial sense compared to the constant repair costs.

is this the same competition

[ccordero]

where MIT lost against high school students>?

Re:When something goes wrong

[SlayerofGods]

I personally would have gone with 'Deep Blue Screen of Death'
Has a better sound to it ;)

DBSOD

[DrXym]

Deep Blue Sea of Death

Re:XP Embedded

[joepeg]

"This is the captain speaking..."

"What are your coordinates?"

"0x0000007B (0xF741B84C,0xC0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000) INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE"

Re:XP Embedded

[hotdiggitydawg]

The embedded version of XP is actually quite nice. I helped configure a version that runs some navigation equipment on airplanes.

They use XP for navigating on airplanes now? Wow - finally it gives real meaning to the term "Blue screen of death". Maybe this article belongs in the "whirrrrrrr-blub-blub-blub dept." instead. Given the (in)stability of my current XP boxen, I think I'll walk everywhere from now on...

Re:XP Embedded

[saider]

Is that Admiral Protection Fault in the Navy?

/usr/local/bin/egregious_spell_checker

[Anonymous Coward]

Found: duck tape

Processing...

Multiple possibilities found...

1. To decrease height rapidly because a sticky film has been thrown in your direction ("Duck! Tape!")

2. An adhesive strip that is used to attach together two or more types of water fowl

3. A far-too-common misspelling for duct tape (see: their/they're, to/too, your/you're)

The most likely cause is (3). Because of the nature of the original message (submarine, thus water-based), it is possible that the original message is in reference to (2). This is, however, unlikely.

bash-3.00#

Re:Cornell Sub

[myc_lykaon]

Of course, they did have a PHD student

They won, even with that handicap? I'm impressed.

(Speaking as someone with a PhD :) )

Re:is this the same competition

[WillyMF1]

Funny thing is that although the UAV competition is prestigious, even when we won 1st almost nobody outside of the sciences on campus noticed.

Really? Those guys must have really missed out on some good pickup lines then.

"Hey baby, wanna come back to my place and see my award for getting things to go down?"

hmm... maybe not.