The Students Autonomous Underwater Challenge - Europe (SAUC-E) is a competition for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) jointly organized by the British and French Defense Ministries (especially the dstl ). The competition, in which many European universities take part, has been held annually since 2006, alternating between France and Great Britain. The aim of the competition is to find new solutions to existing problems with AUVs, such as position determination and cartography. Previous winners of the competition were Girona ( Spain ) in 2006 , Southampton (UK) in 2007 and Edinburgh (UK) in 2008 . The last SAUC-E competition took place from July 4th to 10th 2011 in La Spezia , Italy. In 2009 it was held from July 6th to 10th in Gosport , southern England . The next competition will be held in La Spezia (Italy) in early July 2010.
