Democratizing
marine exploration.
Meet
TRI26
A competition-grade underwater vehicle engineered for full 6-DOF control, triple-camera situational awareness, and modular mission adaptability.
TALON v2 —
Built to grip anything.
A 2DoF end-effector designed for the MATE ROV task pool. Dual-servo articulation means the claw rotates independently of the ROV — no repositioning required. Tool-free field swaps and a built-in camera mount, all in a package that attaches with two M3 screws.
MMT.
Built for the Crew,
Not Just the Pilot.
The Mission Management Terminal — a real-time crew coordination system built from scratch for competitive ROV operations.
Every decision in the water is a time decision. MMT eliminates the ambiguity — both operators see the same state, the same clock, the same prediction.
Custom-built by Project Trident. Not a plugin. Not a dashboard template.
OpenBot
An open-source vehicle interface developed by Project Trident. In collaboration with Whalefall, OpenBot enables real-world data collection deployments beyond the competition pool.
"Providing opportunities to apply engineering around the world."
A first-year team. A production-grade vehicle.
Ranked #4 at the 2026 MATE ROV Regional — Explorer Class. First year. First competition. Top four.
Project Trident is a student-led engineering company based in Danville, California. Founded by six core members at The Athenian School, the company has grown to 15 engineers, designers, and operators united by a single mission: to build technology that makes the ocean more accessible. From a custom ROV to an open-source vehicle interface deployed in real-world research, Project Trident approaches every problem the way a professional engineering team would — with iteration, precision, and a bias toward building things that actually work.
Backed by
people who build.
Project Trident is supported by partners who help turn prototypes into working systems, practice hours into performance, and student engineering into something real.
The people
behind the machine.
CEO
Max Mao
CTO
David Chen
COO
Ariel Grossberg
TRI27
TRI26 IPC demonstrated that a first-year team can build a production-grade ROV from scratch. TRI27 begins where IPC left off — deeper autonomy, a more capable vision system, and a platform designed to scale.
Contact the team.
Reach out for sponsorship, collaboration, media, or technical questions about the vehicle, software stack, and competition work.