General Atomics

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Feb 16, 2009

SAN DIEGO, CA – 16 February 2009 – For the third consecutive year, General Atomics (GA) is a key sponsor of the San Diego iBotics Student Engineering Society team in its quest to win the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) Autonomous Underwater Vehicles competition. The contest will be held at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center-San Diego, July 28 through August 2, 2009.

The Stingray is the iBotics team’s entry into the AUVSI competition

GA is providing funding to support this endeavor and members of the GA Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) engineering team areproviding engineering mentoring to the iBotics team. In addition to GA’s monetary contribution, the company also donated a test pool for the team’s fully autonomous submarine, the Stingray. Appropriately named for its shape, the 2008 Stingray finished 11th in the competition, which consisted of 25 teams. To prepare for this year’s competition, Gideon Prior, President of the iBotics Student Organization, UCSD Chapter, says the team is focusing on improving the Stingray’s autonomous controls capabilities and hopes to improve their finish significantly if not win the competition all together.

GA is engaged in the development of advanced UUV technologies for the Navy and views this sponsorship opportunity as a way to nurture interest in the critical technologies associated with these types of systems at the collegiate level. It serves to increase awareness of the future UUVs will play in the Navy, and to further stimulate student interest in this field. Daryl Bever, Program Manager, Special Projects Office, Advanced Technologies Group, stated, “GA’s sponsorship of the iBotics team not only helps them to succeed in the next AUVSI AUV competition, but it also helps develop local engineering talent in technologies of interest to us. It is exciting to see the progress that this talented group is making in this challenging field.”

GA is a San Diego-based company with a 50 year history of successful solutions for environmental, energy, and defense challenges. GA specializes in performing innovative research and development and transforming conceptual results into practical systems. Affiliated manufacturing and commercial service companies include General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., which produces the Predator® family of unmanned aerial vehicles.

For more information contact:

Daryl Bever
Program Manager
Special Projects Office
Advanced Technologies Group
(858) 455-3319
Daryl.Bever@gat.com

Carl Fisher
Director, Business Development
Advanced Technologies Group
(202) 496-8217
Carl.Fisher@gat.com

Doug Fouquet
Public Relations
(858) 455-2173
Fouquet@gat.com