The NSF-funded MATE Center recently held their annual student ROV competition in Canada, and rookie teams from Jesuit High School of Carmichael, California (Explorer class) and Cornerstone Academy of Gainesville, Florida (Ranger class) were this year’s winners. This international event featured 41 teams representing schools from six countries. Students were challenged to design and build underwater robots that operated in a simulated polar environment at Memorial University’s Marine Institute (MI) and the Institute for Ocean Technology (IOT) in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
A complete list of winners can be found on the MATE center’s website, which also contains full details of the 2007 competition.
The MATE Center’s ROV competition provided students with an opportunity to develop STEM skills in an exciting and challenging setting, and explore possible future careers. For the competition, teams designed and built ROVs for operation in polar environments and researched the culture and history of human life at the poles. The world-class facilities at MI and IOT gave students the unique opportunity to experience the real-life working conditions common to polar environments.
For example, MI’s flume tank is the biggest in the world. Teams completed the mission task of threading a messenger line through a sunken buoy anchor ring and returning the messenger line to the surface, under the influence of the flume tank’s current.
With an air temperature of 5 degrees Celsius and water temperature of -1 degree Celsius, missions in the IOT’s ice tank challenged students to design vehicles that took into account variables such as condensation and the influence of ice particles. Students collected simulated benthic jellyfish and algae samples and installed a passive acoustic sensor on the bottom of the tank, deploying their vehicles through a large hole cut into the one-inch thick sheet of ice.
Last but not least, the IOT’s tow tank featured surface waves that caused students’ vehicles to heave, much like a professional ROV would in heavy ocean waves. The tow tank mission tested the teams’ ability to prepare a subsea oil wellhead by installing a simulated gasket and “injecting” anti-corrosive material.
The ROV competition also featured the Ocean Career Expo, a regularly scheduled part of the international event that is organized by the MATE Center and its COSEE CA partners. Competition sponsors including Oceaneering International, Acergy, OceanWorks, Seatrepid, and others showcased their companies and career opportunities. Students had the opportunity to speak with representatives of these organizations to learn more about current job openings.
Next year’s competition will be held at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California San Diego in June. It will focus on the scientific and technological challenges of working in deep sea hydrothermal vent environments, the geologically and biologically active areas where moving tectonic plates cause hot water to erupt from the sea floor. Next year’s missions missions will challenge students to incorporate sensors on their ROVs.
