IIT Bombay Secures Third Place at California RoboSub 2026

A team of engineering students from IIT Bombay travelled from Mumbai to Irvine, California, to take part in RoboSub 2026, one of the world's biggest student competitions for autonomous underwater vehicles. The event ran from July 11 to 16 at the William Woollett Jr. Aquatics Center. Fifty-eight teams from nine countries entered the event. The IIT Bombay squad, known as AUV-IITB, built and tested their underwater robot for months before the trip. Their goal was simple: prove that an Indian college team could hold its own against some of the strongest robotics programmes on the planet. Also read: IIT Delhi Forms Panel to Probe MSc Student's Death How the Team Performed AUV-IITB has spent years refining a series of vehicles called Matsya, named after the fish avatar in Hindu mythology. The team is made up of students from mechanical, electrical, software, aerospace, and other engineering branches, working under the guidance of faculty advisors. At RoboSub 2026, the Indian team tied with The Ohio State University for third place in the overall Design Documentation category, a mark of how well they had planned and built their vehicle. Bumblebee Autonomous Systems from the National University of Singapore took the top spot in the main event, followed by Istanbul Technical University and Nanyang Technological University. Competing alongside strong international teams shows how far the IIT Bombay team has come. Also read: Delhi Universities to Expand Global AI, Cybersecurity Ties RoboSub and its History RoboSub began in 1997 and is run by RoboNation along with the US Office of Naval Research. It challenges students to build vehicles that can complete underwater tasks autonomously, without direct human control The competition has grown into a major training ground for future engineers in ocean robotics and defense technology, and Indian teams are now becoming a regular presence on that stage.