The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) is the world's largest non-profit organization devoted exclusively to advancing the unmanned systems community. AUVSI, with members from government organizations, industry and academia, is committed to fostering, developing, and promoting unmanned systems and related technologies.

This is a competition hosted by AUVSI and the Office of Naval Research (ONR). The competition involved Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) developed by teams comprising mainly of students with the purpose of completing certain tasks as given in order, or otherwise.

It is held every year at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Centre, TRANSDEC Facility, San Diego, California, USA .

Considering the tasks of the competition, the team decided against a single high level control instead of going for distributed computing which gives better performance and reliability in case of failure. The software is event based, which triggers for sensorial input confining to tasks parameters.

In the start of the mission, the vehicle shall descend to a pre-programmed depth and hold its position. It shall then conduct a circular scan to ascertain the gate location. Having passed the gate, it shall proceed to scan for the red light. On determining its position, it will proceed with the docking (dislodging the buoy) following which it shall proceed along the dashed line. It shall stop at the first bin for dropping the marker while the second bin will be approached with a predetermined velocity to dislodge the second buoy, after which the marker will then be dropped.
The last part will involve homing in on an acoustic pinger by way of triangulation. Hovering above the pinger, the vehicle will attempt to capture the 'X' as it moves upwards towards the octagons. Finally, it shall surface in the middle of the required octagon.