AVBotz Team History
The Amador Valley High School Robotics Club — Est. 1999, Pleasanton, California
1999–2000 Founding Team (Hammerhead)
Overview of Past Teams
Humble Beginnings
The Amador Valley High School Robotics Club was founded in 1999 by an intrepid group of students with a passion for robotics. These students decided to enter the International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition, a competition in which only colleges competed. Despite this, with their ingenuity and dedication, they placed 6th at the 2000 competition with their AUV Hammerhead, above several of the nation’s most prestigious colleges. (The 1999 - 2000 Website)
2000–2001 Team (Manta Ray)
A Second Shot
After this momentous first step, the club continued to improve upon its designs and algorithms for their second generation sub, the Manta Ray. At the 2001 competition, we placed second only to MIT. This well-deserved victory showed that a group of high school students with dedication could do better than college students with more funds and resources. (The 2000-2001 Website)
The Barracuda Dynasty
Barracuda was a 14 year project entered into every RoboSub competition from 2002 to 2015. Team members expanded and improved upon Barracuda from year to year. At RoboSub 2015, Barracuda achieved the best performance of the week and placed 7th overall! Barracuda served as an important platform for AVBotz by making it easier for members to pass down knowledge and experience with working on the vehicle.
2001–2002 Team (Barracuda Mark I)
2011–2012 Team (Barracuda Mark XI)
2012–2013 Team (Barracuda Mark XII)
2014–2015 Team (Barracuda Mark XIV)
2015–2016 Team (Marlin 2016)
A New Era
Following the success and consistency of Barracuda, the club entered into a new period with rapid change and advancements with new submarines. In 2016, we constructed Marlin, a next-generation vehicle that served us well up to the 2019 competition. In 2020, we began construction of a new vehicle, Nemo, to further improve Marlin’s design and improve sub stability in the water. With Nemo in the online competition of 2021, the team placed 1st in the sensor optimization video, 6th in the hull design video, and 9th in the journal paper. Although we were happy with our results, we knew that the real deal had yet to be achieved in in-person competition.
2017-2018 Team (Marlin 2018)
The Team Today 🐠
It's 2022 and our team is stronger and more experienced than ever; we're up to around 25-30 members each year in addition to a growing interest in robotics at our school. Even though everyone faced many challenges working through the COVID-19 pandemic, we're happy to say that our resilient team of aspiring high school students were able to work from home, meet occasionally in person, and keep pushing ahead.
2018-2019 Team (Marlin 2019)
While in 2021, we didn't get the chance to meet with Harvest Park Middle School students to teach robotics, or demonstrate our submarine to the general public at the Alameda County Fair, we were still able to offers lectures on mechanical, electrical, and software concepts for Amador Valley High School students at the ACE Code Day event.
In 2019-2020, we worked to break new ground on the design of Nemo, optimizing our new vehicle's capability to get the basics of tasks right; getting this reliability in place this year will help us immensely in the future as we adapt to new competition tasks.
2021-2022 Team (Nemo 2022)
In 2022, our team participated in the first in-person RoboSub competition since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Despite being the only high school team competing, AVBotz came in second place in the autonomy challenge, beating 37 college teams, and winning a grand prize of $3,000.
RoboSub 2022 ties the greatest performance our club has had in its 23 year history, and we're incredibly excited to improve further. Here's to all the amazing things we'll learn and the people we'll meet in the future!
2022-2023 Team (Marlin V2)
At RoboSub 2023, AVBotz placed 5th out of 35 teams in the autonomy challenge, winning a $1,000 prize. AVBotz was once again one of the few high school teams at the competition. Leading up to RoboSub 2023, AVBotz worked hard to make significant hardware and software improvements by iterating upon previous designs and building Marlin V2. Despite facing challenges and initially failing to qualify for finals due to technical issues, AVBotz eventually qualified through the third chance round.
