The eISR is a biennial, year-long competition for university students that begins with an extensive design and build phase, continues through a qualification round, and ultimately winds up with a two-week submarine racing event in Gosport, on the south coast of England. The winners are those who can combine the best of engineering, biomechanics, sport, and teamwork to produce a highly manoeuvrable, controllable, and above all, fast underwater racing machine.

The machines that take part in the eISR are submarines in the truest sense of the word, minus the one constraint of a watertight hull. They are designed to operate safely at depths of 3 to 6 metres, where they float neutrally buoyantly. The pilot, who is a scuba diver, straps their feet into a set of pedals and drives a propeller or other propulsion system using muscle-power alone. Steering is achieved with joysticks and mechanical or mechatronic control systems driving rudders and dive-planes.

Check out our teams page for examples of what the teams have built over the years. We differentiate between propeller-driven submarines and those powered by an alternative propulsion system, usually inspired by nature – think flapping wings or undulating fins.

The eISR is for teams of university students. Typically team members come primarily from engineering and sports sciences. However, since each team needs to self-organise and raise its own funding, many teams include students from business, communications and public relations to name but a few.

Not every team member must be a diver. Each team does however need a minimum of four divers, including the pilot. All divers must be qualified to dive independently (e.g. PADI Open Water Diver) and have completed at least 10 dives post qualification. The lead diver of every team must have completed a total of 20 dives post qualification.

Read the whole of the website, including the rulebook, then talk to your classmates. The project is a cool one, so you shouldn’t have trouble generating initial interest. Go for a mix of engineers, sportspeople and business students. If you can recruit a few divers, that’s really useful, but you do have time to learn, so don’t sweat it. Once you’ve got your team together, elect a captain, a chief engineer, and a communications officer. Set expectations carefully and be reasonable about time commitments (students are busy people!). Then go find a professor.

The eISR programme was designed by a team of academics with many years of experience teaching engineering design at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. The content is ideal for group projects, capstones, or final year research theses. It fits nicely into the context of marine, manufacturing or mechanical engineering. Aerospace engineering and physics are also other natural academic homes for the project. So look for interested professors in those teaching and research areas. If you have a Design Centre or a FabLab/MakerSpace, try asking there whom to approach.

The diving commitment is sometimes worrying, and the budget can be daunting, so be well prepared to argue the project’s worth! The trick is to put together a proper project proposal with carefully thought through plans with budgets and Gantt charts (you learned all of this in class – time now to put it to use!).

If your target professor wants more information or reassurance about the competition and what it would mean for them and your school, they can email the Race Director, Prof. William Megill, at info@subrace.eu.

This is another area that will depend a lot on how you’re set up in your local community. Your professors will have some ideas of companies they often work with. Talk to your Design Centre, FabLab or MakerSpace. Your school almost certainly has a knowledge transfer office which will be in charge of outreach to local companies. Ask your professor to speak to the head of department or faculty dean about whether the university can pay your entry fees, support your travel, or otherwise help sponsor your activities. Your school probably has a “friends of” organisation – some kind of local community funded foundation that funds university projects – talk to them, or have your prof talk to them. Approach your student societies. The professional engineering bodies might be able to help, if you have a local chapter. Lions Club, Rotary, those kinds of organisations might have budgets.

Then go pound the pavement – talk to companies, especially the HR people. Take your plan and budget with you, and have a good set of options that they will receive in return for funding you at different levels. Speak to your parents and ask them to ask around their networks. Cake sales, barbecues, packing shopping bags, car washes – lots of ways to raise cash, and remember that lots of smalls eventually make a big. And finally, look to your own finances. For many teams, one of the commitments members make is to pay for their own travel, or part of it.

Engineering design is in practise pretty much exactly what you learned in class. You start with a specification of what you want to achieve, then think about the physics you’ll have to work with and break up your requirements into subsystems, brainstorm and evaluate the design concepts that could solve your challenges, and finally do the detailed calculations and drawings that bring your design to virtual life.