The Amador Valley High School Robotics Club has constructed an autonomous underwater vehicle for the eleventh annual Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition. Named the Barracuda Mark VII, its two major design goals are stability and flexibility.

       The vehicle is propelled by two laterally mounted SeaBotix thrusters, which control speed and heading, and two auxiliary thrusters aligned vertically to control pitch and depth. A pressure sensor, compass, camera, and s provide navigation data to the computer, which is an OQO Model +01 running Windows XP and provides autonomous control of the vehicle. Each hardware device is associated with a separate software driver in order to keep the software as modular as the hardware. The software is also very flexible, making decisions based on weighted input from different sensors in order to minimize the impact of any single point of failure.