Team IMU-VRX, composed of members from the Field Robotics Laboratory, came third in VRX 2023 competition. The VRX competition is an important international autonomous surface vessel simulation competition. Congratulations to the team members: Muhammed Buğra Ayhan, Ayşenur Yörür, Mustafa Bayrak, Burak Rüstemoğulları, Zafer Tunçer and the faculty advisor Asst. Prof. Haluk Bayram. The VRX competition is jointly organized by the RoboNation foundation, OSRF (maintainer of the widely used ROS framework in robotics), US Naval Postgraduate School and the Office of Naval Research. 34 teams from 14 countries participated in the competition and the only team representing Turkey was Team IMU-VRX.
The VRX 2023 competition consists of eight tasks evaluating motion planning and perception algorithms designed by competitors are tested on the VRX autonomous surface vehicle simulator. The first task tests the dynamic positioning of the autonomous surface vessel against external disturbances such as wind and water current. The second task tests the surface vehicle's ability to track a given set of waypoints. The third task tests the surface vehicle's perception capability in detecting both the type and location of buoys. The fourth task measures the ability to detect the position of an underwater beacon and the ability to remain stationary as close as possible to the beacon. The fifth task tests the ability of tracking and following the moving animals in the environment. Team IMU came 1st in this task. The sixth task tests the autonomous surface vessel’s ability to follow a route indicated with long buoys and avoid colliding with the obstacles in the environment. Team IMU came 2nd in this task. The seventh mission tested the ability to avoid collisions with buoys in the environment while trying to calculate the position of a moving signal transmitter underwater. Team IMU came 3rd in this task. The eight mission tests the ability of parking into a specified dock and shooting a ball into the target. Team IMU came 3rd on this task.
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