Matthew D. Hancher

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The MIT ORCA 2

Tags: autonomous, mit, orca, robots

In the summer of 1999, basking in the success of the ORCA 1 submarine the previous year, MIT Project ORCA entered the second AUVSI International AUV Competition with the completely-redesigned ORCA 2.

This year, having proven myself as the systems wrangler for the ORCA 1, I took over as the head of the software team and thus captain of the ship.  This meant that sleep was pretty much out of the question.  The course was considerably harder this year, and the competing teams more numerous, but our team was amazing, the ORCA 2 was a truly beautiful machine, and we pulled out another first-place victory.  For many years this was among my proudest moments.

Next came ORCA 2b!