Duke Robotics Club just got back from RoboSub 2025, where we placed 7th out of 58 teams and made it to finals for the first time ever! We also earned 6th place in design documentation, with 3rd for our technical report and 5th for our website.
Highlights from the Week
This year we competed with two robots: Oogway and Crush. That let us spread out tasks and increase our chances to score.
- Oogway successfully fired torpedoes into the target holes.
- Crush pulled off a barrel roll, ran the slalom, and surfaced in the octagon.
- Our sonar system scanned for the back wall and lined up to it.
Challenges We Ran Into
It wasn’t all smooth:
- Navigation inconsistency. Dead reckoning worked well one day, then drifted badly the next.
- Hardware reliability. Oogway had a faulty power switch, thruster connections kept dropping, and modems disconnected often — forcing long reboots during our runs.
- Humidity problems. Oogway had to be aired out at night to prevent water damage, cutting into test time.
These issues made it tough to be consistent, but both robots still managed to complete important tasks and score points.
Competition Runs
Crush qualified right away on the first day, which gave us time to refine tasks for both robots. Oogway zeroed in on torpedoes, while Crush worked on navigation challenges.
Semifinals were tough. Modem disconnects meant each robot only got one real attempt per day. Even so, Oogway fired torpedoes into the target, while Crush did its barrel roll and attempted slalom. Unfortunately, a set of strange extra moves pushed Crush out of range of scoring zones, costing us from qualifying for finals.
On the final day, during third chance, we simplified our strategy. Crush dropped its complex bin-scanning approach and went with a quicker dead-reckoning method. That let it finish slalom and surface in the octagon. Furthermore, Crush was able to face the correct fish for even more points. Oogway had trouble detecting the torpedo banner that day, but together the robots scored just enough to carry us into finals — a first for our team.
Moving Forward
This year was a milestone for the club. Making finals showed that the work everyone put in paid off, even with the setbacks we faced. More importantly, we learned where our systems need to be more reliable, and that gives us clear goals for next season.
We’ll be taking what we learned back into the lab as we start preparing for RoboSub 2026. Thanks to everyone on the team for the hard work, and to our supporters for cheering us on — we couldn’t have done it without you.
