The Ege ROV Team returned from TEKNOFEST with two awards.

The Ege University Ege ROV Team won third place and the ‘Best Design’ award in the ‘Unmanned Underwater Systems Competition’ at the world’s largest technology festival.

The Ege ROV Team of Ege University returned with awards from TEKNOFEST Mediterranean, where aviation, space, and technology enthusiasts from Turkey and around the world gathered. The team won the third place award in the TEKNOFEST 2024 ‘Unmanned Underwater Systems Competition’ and crowned their success with the ‘Best Design’ award.

Ege University Rector Prof. Dr. Necdet Budak welcomed the Ege ROV Team in his office and congratulated them. Rector Prof. Dr. Necdet Budak stated, ‘Our teams returned from TEKNOFEST Mediterranean with awards thanks to their innovative projects that prioritize science and technology. Our young people made a significant impact at TEKNOFEST, which is supported by many organizations playing a critical role in the development of national technology in our country, with their innovative projects. As in previous years, our teams have worked, produced, and prepared innovative projects within the ecosystem we created this year, making us proud and successfully representing our university. Our Ege ROV Team won third place and the ‘Best Design’ award in the ‘Unmanned Underwater Systems Competition.’ I congratulate our team.’

‘We are proud to leave TEKNOFEST with two awards’

Ege ROV Team Captain Yiğit Yıldız said, ‘Our Ege ROV Team is a multidisciplinary team that brings together many different engineering disciplines. Each of our team members played a significant role in customizing our vehicle. At this point, we had aimed to win the ‘Most Original Design Award’ from the very beginning. We conducted extensive research to ensure that even our material selections would differentiate us from other teams and chose cost-effective yet more durable materials that had not been used in our systems before. The vehicle we created is designed to handle all the tasks assigned by the competition organizer Aselsan. One of these tasks, the torpedo launch task, was perhaps the biggest reason we won the ‘Most Original Design Award.’ The uniqueness of this system, inspired by the revolvers’ magazines, lies in its ability to perform both firing and automatic transition to the next magazine with a single motor. This system can also launch all five torpedoes it can load simultaneously, achieving a series of launches within 10 seconds. In another task, the underwater cable tracking and anomaly detection task, our vehicle completed the task with record points by detecting all shapes very quickly without deviating from the line it needed to follow. The speed, stability, and high maneuverability brought by our vehicle’s unique software also showed itself in this task, earning us third place in Turkey. We are proud to leave TEKNOFEST with two awards. Being the first multidisciplinary team to achieve such success from within our university is also a source of pride for us. We thank our esteemed Rector for all the support and opportunities he has provided us.’