Parvus Sponsors Students in National Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Event

Salt Lake City and Atlanta Georgia - July 20, 2005 - Parvus today announced that a Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) graduate student team will be relying upon Parvus embedded PC/104 computing hardware to power its Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) in the AUVSI/ONR 8th International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition taking place August 3-7 at the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Center in San Diego.

To assist the Georgia Tech student team in this annual unmanned submarine contest, Parvus donated several of its SpacePC embedded PC boards, OnPower PC/104 power supplies, and I/O modules. These compact, ruggedized components provide an ideal computing platform to support the university team in navigating their custom-design AUV through a series of demanding trials at SPAWAR’s Transducer Evaluation Center (TRANSDEC).

Georgia Tech’s team captain John (Jack) Griffin selected Parvus’ products for his team’s submarine (the "Nautilus") because of the compact, highly reliable, ruggedized nature of Parvus’ PC/104 product line. The Parvus boards are responsible for processing streaming video data, customized mapping software, problem solving, priority tasking, as well as agent-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) for on-the-fly decision making.

"The reliability and interoperability of Parvus’ products have far exceeded our expectations," said Griffin. "Processing vision data is very difficult because of the large amount of real-time data and the computationally intense algorithms. Parvus’ CPUs handle this load with time to spare."

The Nautilus submarine incorporates three embedded processors, serving as the brains of the unit, which communicates with its surroundings in connection with Parvus’ PC/104 Ethernet card and 62 channel digital I/O board. The "eyes" of the AUV are two video cameras connected by USB. Through these eyes, the SpacePC CPUs gather and processes data critical to mission objectives.

The purpose of the competition, which focuses on autonomous robotics, is to successfully navigate an unmanned submarine through a field of obstacles and complete its programmed mission. There are three basic missions each AUV will tackle. For detailed information on this event please visit www.auvsi.org/competitions/water.cfm

The Georgia Tech team consists of 10 different students: two graduates, and eight undergraduates. Their fields of study include Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, and Aeronautical Engineering.

ABOUT PARVUS
Since 1983, Parvus Corporation has been a strategic systems engineering and development partner for aerospace, defense, transportation, and industrial OEMs. Specializing in the rapid design and production of turnkey embedded computing solutions for harsh environments, Parvus leverages extensive expertise in systems integration and a complete line of rugged PC/104, PC/104-Plus, and PCI-104 computer modules to ensure high reliability and accelerate time-to-market for its customers. Parvus is the US arm of the Eurotech Group, which has operations across Europe, North America and Asia.

Visit www.parvus.com or call 801.483.1533 for more information.

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