Carnegie Mellon's National Robotics Engineering Center is part of a team assembled by prime contractor Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to design, build and test an unmanned autonomous surface vessel that can track a diesel-electric submarine for months and over thousands of kilometers with minimal supervision.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded SAIC a three-year, $58 million contract for the Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program. SAIC had provided conceptual design services in the initial phase of the program, creating an innovative wave piercing trimaran. SAIC will now design and build the ACTUV prototype. NREC will develop the vessel's autonomous capability, with John Dolan, principal systems scientist at the Robotics Institute as principal investigator and Pete Rander, NREC associate director of operations, as co-PI.