Following its championship success in the TEKNOFEST Unmanned Underwater Systems Competition, our Konya Technical University RACLAB NOVA Team is preparing to carry its achievement onto the international stage. Having qualified to participate in RoboSub 2026, one of the world’s most prestigious autonomous underwater robotics competitions, the team will represent our country with the innovative technologies it has developed.

 

Since 2014, students have been conducting studies in the fields of autonomous systems, sensor fusion, artificial intelligence, and control engineering under the Robotics, Automation and Control Laboratory (RACLAB), attracting attention with their achievements in national and international competitions. After its TEKNOFEST championship, the RACLAB NOVA Team set RoboSub 2026 as its new target and is now preparing to bring its knowledge and experience in underwater technologies to the world stage.

 

At RoboSub 2026, which will be held in the United States, the team will compete against teams from the world’s leading universities and carry out challenging tasks with an autonomous underwater vehicle designed and developed entirely by the team. Within the scope of the competition, the vehicles will demonstrate advanced engineering capabilities such as autonomous navigation, object detection, manipulation, task planning, and artificial intelligence-based decision-making.

 

The RACLAB NOVA Team continues its work under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Akif Durdu from the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at our university’s Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences. The team is captained by Beyza Nur Yağcı, a student in the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering.

 

The team includes Hatice Kübra İlhan, Abdurrahman İnce, Mevlüt Burak Dağlı, Ahmet Selim İlhan, and Aybüke Deveci from the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering; Abdulsamet Han from the Department of Mechanical Engineering; Halise Emine Anat from the Department of Computer Engineering; and Mustafa Bedir Sarıtosun, a student in the Department of Agricultural Machinery and Technologies Engineering at Selçuk University.

 

Following months of intensive design, production, software development, and testing, the RACLAB NOVA Team is preparing for RoboSub 2026 with the aim not only of achieving success in the competition, but also of representing our country’s engineering strength and domestic technology production capacity in the best possible way on the international stage.

 

 

Konya Technical University