NYCU's Unmanned Submarine Team Validates Underwater Sensing and Navigation in International Competition

Central News Agency (Taipei, June 2) - The ORCA AUV unmanned submarine team, composed of students from National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU), recently participated in the 'SAUVC 2026 Singapore Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Challenge,' successfully advancing to the finals. Through the competition, they validated the system integration capabilities of their submarine, including autonomous navigation and underwater sensing. NYCU released a press release today stating that the ORCA AUV team was co-advised by Lai Chin-wen and Tsai Chia-hung from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The team, consisting of 12 students from the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering, integrated visual image recognition, automatic control, and power systems to build an unmanned submarine system capable of autonomous decision-making. The Singapore Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Challenge consists of two stages: qualifying and finals. The qualifying round required the submarine to autonomously pass through a specified gate size without human operation, complete a turn, and pass through again. The finals included tasks such as underwater navigation, underwater communication, and underwater ball retrieval and release. All operations had to be completed autonomously by the system, testing the team's core technical integration capabilities in perception, control, and decision-making. NYCU stated that the ORCA AUV team was the only team from Taiwan selected to participate this year. They successfully qualified for the finals and competed against top international student teams. Although they did not make it into the top three, the team validated their system integration capabilities in autonomous navigation and underwater sensing through the competition, demonstrating their research achievements and international competitiveness. Lai Chin-wen mentioned that the main goal of the competition is to cultivate students to enter the field of marine robotics and promote the development of autonomous technology applications in marine exploration, underwater search and rescue, underwater inspection, and underwater operations. The competition emphasizes the autonomous capabilities and system integration of unmanned vehicles, which is a high-level challenge for participating teams. Team member Wu Po-shao shared that they faced many challenges during the preparation process, including hull leaks, image recognition failures, and insufficient positioning accuracy, all of which were gradually overcome through repeated testing and teamwork. Many new members joined this year, and although they were still familiarizing themselves with system operations, they all invested a significant amount of time and effort, successfully completing system development, testing, and competition tasks.