MIT Arcturus

Our mission is to:

• Give undergraduates hands-on experience leading teams and applying their knowledge by building and programming autonomous vehicles
• Share our love of robots with the community through a series of outreach events including lab tours, demos, classes, and mentorship.
• Create technology that we believe will positively impact the environment and coastal communities.

This season, we are competing in the online RobotX VRX autonomy competition and building a brand new autonomous boat to compete in RoboBoat 2025. 

RoboBoat is an annual international competition where undergraduate students design and build a small Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) to complete a variety of tasks that mimic real-world challenges facing the maritime industry. The competition also tasks us with raising team funds, documenting our progress, and organizing outreach. In this way, we hope to take what we learn and give back to our community. Arcturus has placed every year we have competed, and in 2022, we won first in design documentation, website, video, and innovation. We are working on a total hardware and software revamp this season and aim to compete in RoboBoat again in 2025!

The VRX competition is an affordable entry point for teams interested in building skills in maritime autonomy, learning more about simulation environments as a tool, considering competing in RobotX or all of the above. This is our first year competing in RobotX's VRX competition virtually, and we think this will be a great opportunity to showcase our robust simulation environment and autonomy stack.  

As a new team, we are growing rapidly, and we know how to "make a splash" wherever we go! Want to learn more about what we're up to? Follow us on Instagram, TikTok, or LinkedIn, and check out our blogs on our website!