RobotX is an international robotic vehicle competition organized by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) and sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR). University teams are competitively selected from six Pacific Rim countries (Australia, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and the United States) to participate in this prestigious competition. For the RobotX Challenge, each team is provided with a 16-ft Wave Adaptive Modular Vessel (WAM-V), which they must outfit with a range of sensors, software and hardware to facilitate on-board decision-making and mission implementation. Tasks like obstacle avoidance, navigation and object identification must be completed without human guidance, intervention or remote control.
In 2014, Villanova’s College of Engineering, together with Florida Atlantic University (FAU), were selected to compete in the inaugural RobotX Challenge, which was held in Singapore. As Team WORX, FAU managed systems engineering and low-level control portions of the project, while Villanova managed high-level control, vision-based navigation, localization and mapping. Team WORX performed extremely well in the competition, secured four prizes, and has subsequently been invited to compete in the upcoming RobotX Challenge.
In December 2016, Team WORX will head to Oahu, Hawaii to face-off against 17 other university teams in the 2016 RobotX Challenge. Team WORX was one of only seven US-based teams to be selected to compete in this exciting international competition.
