Making Waves: Team Edhitha at SAUVC 2024

In March 2024, Team Edhitha embraced a bold new frontier—competing in the Singapore Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Challenge (SAUVC) with our debut AUV, Vyaana. Held at Singapore Polytechnic, SAUVC brought together top student teams from around the globe to test their underwater robotic systems in real-world-inspired tasks like navigation, visual detection, acoustic localization, and robotic manipulation.

Our Leap into Underwater Robotics:
Transitioning from aerial platforms to marine robotics was a completely new adventure. After months of ideation, prototyping, and iteration, we proudly built Vyaana—a compact and capable AUV equipped with:

• A Raspberry Pi-based flight controller
• Intel RealSense camera for vision-based object detection
• Integrated sensors and thrusters for precise underwater control
• Custom software stack for PID tuning and path planning

On the Global Stage:
Traveling to Singapore and representing our country at an international competition was an inspiring experience. We faced real engineering challenges—from debugging critical systems to adapting to live test environments. As one teammate reflected:

“Seeing Vyaana in action, after all the work we put in, was surreal. The learning and teamwork made this an unforgettable journey.”

Looking Ahead:
SAUVC 2024 marked a defining milestone for Team Edhitha—not just as a competition, but as our launchpad into the world of marine robotics. We’re deeply grateful to our seniors for their guidance and mentorship, and we're excited to evolve further in this domain.

From skies to seas, Team Edhitha is just getting started.