Award-winning Robosub teams use Nortek navigation sensors

Desert WAVE: using a DVL 1000 to perform “flawless” navigation

The 2025 Robosub second-place finishers, the Desert WAVE team is an all-female team with an impressive track record in the competition. This year was their fourth year using the Nortek DVL 1000 on their vehicle Dragon, which works in tandem with a smaller vehicle, Baby Dragon.

Faridodin Lajvardi, team mentor and CEO of the Si Se Puede foundation which founded the team, says the DVL has been a big part of the team’s success.

“It’s pretty much been flawless,” he says. “When it comes to navigation, nobody can match us, with the combination of our DVL 1000 and fiber optic gyro.”

The Desert WAVE team finished first overall in 2024. While the team’s mission is to foster an environment for female engineering students, Lajvardi says he wants the perception of the team to go beyond that.

“Our goal was to get people to stop thinking of us as an all-women’s team, but instead the team they’re afraid to lose to,” he says. “We think we’ve shifted people’s paradigm a little bit.”

In future competitions, Lajvardi says the team aims to improve the capabilities of Baby Dragon to earn more points for the vehicles working in cooperation with one another to perform the highest-scoring tasks.

BRACU Duburi: bringing marine robotics to Bangladesh with use of a Nucleus 1000

The BRACU Duburi team from Bangladesh was formed in 2017 to create a space for underwater robotics enthusiasts. Their vehicle is the first autonomous underwater vehicle in Bangladesh.

This year, Nortek sponsored the team with the use of a Nucleus 1000 navigation sensor. The team noted that having the Nucleus was instrumental in completing tasks such as long-distance navigation, docking and obstacle avoidance.

“Using the Nucleus improved consistency, which gave us an edge against some of the top universities in the world,” says Abid Mahmud, Team Lead. “The DVL velocity data provided by the Nucleus significantly improved our reliability by reducing drift. In Robosub, where every small error can compound into a failed mission, the stability provided by the Nucleus directly contributed to our competitive performance.”

The BRACU Duburi team finished in the top ten teams overall, and also won this year’s Entrepreneurship award for being “instrumental in growing the robotics presence in their country.” Alumni from the team influenced one of the first robotics startups in Bangladesh.

“This experience gave our team valuable insight into advanced navigation practices and how industry-grade sensors can transform AUV performance,” says Md Mahfujul Haque, Operational Advisor & Mentor. “This knowledge is now fueling our spin-off venture, Dubotech, where we are developing Bangladesh’s first commercial ROVs and AUVs. We see this as the beginning of a long-term impact on the marine robotics ecosystem in South Asia.”

UC Davis Cyclone: a new team making a splash

Nortek also sponsored the UC Davis Cyclone Robosub team in their inaugural year with a Nucleus 1000 loan for their vehicle. Despite their rookie status, the team was able to complete several tasks and left the competition motivated for the future.

Peter Webster, team co-president and co-founder, emphasized the importance of the Nucleus in controlling their vehicle.

“Without the Nucleus 1000, our control system would have been unusable,” he says. “We had originally planned on solely relying on an IMU for heading and position information, but the error accumulation of this method would have made our vehicle wildly inaccurate.”

Due to limited time in testing the system, the team wasn’t able to perfect the system’s capabilities in time for the competition. However, by the end of the seven-day competition, they had the vehicle navigating to waypoints successfully using the readouts from the Nucleus.

Webster says the team is looking forward to seeing what they can accomplish with more time and more experience under their belt.

“We’re really looking forward to spending more time working with a DVL and going through the proper calibration,” he says. “Overall, we’re very thankful for Nortek’s support!”

Supporting the next generation of marine roboticists

Nortek is proud to sponsor events like this one to foster the next generation of engineers in ocean technology. We’re looking forward to seeing what these teams can do as their knowledge and experience continues to grow and technology continues to make advancements.