The students of Mahindra Ecole Centrale (MEC) situated near Hyderabad, Telangana have recently developed a unique Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) which has capabilities to transcend into great depths. This AUV can also maneuver itself with little or no human intervention at all which makes it more unique than other contemporary AUVs. These engineering students who developed this vehicle, named it the 'Black Pearl'. This vehicle can operate independently underwater and perform tasks autonomously. This AUV is technically a free swimming, untethered robot which houses a lithium polymer battery and a Logical 270 vertical camera along with Raspberry Pi V2 horizontal camera for image capturing abilities. The group of engineering students who have developed it reported that the Black Pearl is capable of executing instructions that have been hard coded into it, with high accuracy and with minimal error. The cost of developing this vehicle was around ₹3.70 lakh as reported by the MEC. Dr. Yajulu Medury, Director, MEC said, “Our students continue to exhibit strong interests in R&D and creativity in building workable prototype devices and gadgets for different segments. Black Pearl is another such product where the students and their academic and research mentors worked tirelessly at our Centre for Robotics and created a robust Autonomous Underwater Vehicle". This unique AUV can turn out to be very helpful in areas of marine science, commercial, civil and defense sectors.
