Since its founding in 1999, the AVBotz club at Amador Valley High School has been competing in the annual RoboSub competition. With vast improvements to the submarine design, the club hopes to reach new heights and outperform their previous year’s placement of second. 

Happening from July 31 to August 6, RoboSub 2023 will take place in San Diego in a large eye-shaped pool called TRANSDEC. Around forty teams from all around the world will bring their innovative submarines to compete. 

“[The pool is] split into four different competition areas. The four lanes are different courses. Multiple teams can run their submarines at the same time,” said Justin Yu (’23), President of AVBotz. 

The competition puts submarines through a gauntlet of tasks. Autonomously, submarines have to detect the correct buoys to ram, shoot torpedoes through small holes, detect open areas to surface, and more.

“Each task gives you a certain amount of points, and you do as many tasks as you can to get the most points. Whoever has the most points at the end of the competition wins,” said Yu. 

Building the submarine is no easy task. The AVBotz team consists of forty club members that meet every weekend for around two hours, constantly innovating and improving their design. 

“This year, we’re completely renovating the electrical system of our submarine. We had a lot of inefficient components last year that lowered our runtime. We have new efficient thrusters, which are significantly cheaper than the ones we had last year,” said Yu.

The club is organized into four subdivisions: electrical, mechanical, software, and business with each playing a vital role in the development of the submarine. Each subdivision has a vice president responsible for overseeing all of the work. “I do [work] with other vice presidents to determine what changes or what parts need to be made, and then I delegate that work out to the mechanical members,” said Isabell Lo (’23), Vice President of Mechanical. 

The parts of the submarine are expensive. The business team organizes fundraisers and applies for sponsorships to raise funding. The club has 49 sponsors, including large corporations like Intel and nonprofits like the Rotary Club of Pleasanton. 

“We apply for a lot of sponsorships from Google, PTSA, and PPIE. Companies give us free hardware sponsorships. NVIDIA Jetson is a $2,000 computer, and NVIDIA [gave] it to us for free,” said Yu. 

Club members don’t have to be knowledgeable about robotics right away. The club offers interested students the chance to join as learning members. They can accumulate experience by helping out on small tasks and watching others work.

“When I first joined the club, I had no idea what to do, but as time progressed, the concepts became a lot easier. I learned by doing the tasks and asking questions when I was stuck,” said Parth Diwane (’25). 

Collaboration is essential to the club’s success in the competition. That teamwork creates a tight-knit community that learns, builds, and has fun while doing so, whether it be testing electrical circuits or launching torpedoes in a pool. 

“Seeing your idea come to life is really rewarding. I like working with my team members. They’re all super nice and really smart. There’s just a lot of fun being with them and getting to design and build,” said Lo.