University of Alberta club places third in international robotics competition

Local students build robotic sub A team from the University of Alberta has been recognized for their robotic submarine. Evan Kenny explains.

By Evan Kenny

A team from the University of Alberta is returning home after reaching the podium in an international robotics competition.

The student-run Autonomous Robotic Vehicle Project recently returned from an international student marine robotics competition called Robosub 2023, in which they finished third out of 35 post-secondary institutions for their most-recent project, called Arctos, a robotic submarine capable of cruising through water, shooting torpedos and picking up objects.

In the past, building a robot like it could take years, but this one took club members just a matter of months.

"You learn a lot of theory in your lectures, but you don't learn as much of the true practical application of it, so this has been really helpful to see that," said Logan Krezan, a member of the 60-person club that was founded in 1996 and has created nearly a dozen robots over the years.

"Having a strong presence as not just strong competitors but strong mentors and leaders with the other teams, and showing up and really performing. it was really satisfying."

The students believe projects like this will propel them into their future careers.

"The type of control system we use to work with the robot are really analogous to space applications," said Nathan Chong, who estimates he spent 40-50 hours per week on ARVP work on top of 30 hours per week on schoolwork. "It's the type of education we want to give other kids."

"The work needs to be done no matter what, so that kind of led me to be on the software team here," club member Joshua Brown said. "I think ARVP is a really good space to explore more than just like the rigid things you learn in class."