India's First Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

[sehga...@gmail.com]

I represent a team of undergraduate students from India, who are
building an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) in order to compete
that the 2005 AUVSI and Office of Naval Research (ONR) Autonomous
Underwater Vehicle Competition
(http://www.auvsi.org/competitions/water.cfm). This is a collegiate
level competition that is attended by teams from the world's top
educational institutions and alliances. Some of the major names in the
competition are MIT, Cornell, Duke and ETS.

Being a small self-funded team comprising of members from various
different Universities spread out all over India, we are not
recieveing any form of financial or technical support at the moment.
As a result, we are seeking sponsorships from companies that produce
equipment related to our AUV design and would benefit from association
with our team through international exposure at the highest levels of
industry, academia and media.

Any assistance in the form of grants, products or travel assistance
would be greatly appreciated by our team. In return for your
generosity, we will be willing to distribute brochures about your
company and products, include your logo on our team AUV, uniform and
banner. Also, this being the first ever AUV designed and produced in
India, it is sure to attract ample media attention, and our sponsors
would always be mentioned and thanked in all media exposure.

VIA's new Mini-ITX platform looks extremely promissing for use as the
central processor onour AUV. It provides an excellent platfrom to
perform complex tasks like sonar signal processing and computer
vision. We would be more than happy to utilize this product in our
AUV.