ROV Team Makes Waves at Morning Ex

The Upper School Underwater Robotics team presented a Morning Ex on their team, their robot and this year’s competitions.

Student team members took turns at the podium to share more about the MATE ROV program in general and Parker’s team in particular. The competition uses underwater remotely operated vehicle robots (ROVs) to challenge students to apply science, engineering and technical skills to real-world problems. Each year’s competition involves missions based on real-world scenarios, such as cleaning waterways, protecting coral reefs and inspecting aquaculture pens.

Teams are structured like companies, with students taking on roles in engineering, marketing and finance. Students are split up into six subteams: Electrical works on the wiring for the robot; Mechanical designs and builds the frame; Software Code codes the thrusters and gripper to move; Software Cameras works with the cameras which helps us see the pool while we drive the robot; FLOAT team makes the Float which is a second robot that intakes and repels water to sink and float; and Marketing which designs merch, manages social media and creates a poster for our competition. Student engineers prototype 3D designs, write code, adjust floats, wire electrics, focus onboard cameras and test the water-tightness of their build’s components. Students involved in marketing promote their simulated “companies” using displays and documentation to communicate their engineering process, vehicle design and its real-world applications.

This presentation included videos from MATE ROV and the team’s exploits from last season. Students shared 3D models of last year’s design and spoke about their plans to iterate upon it this year by adding a pair of additional thrusters to assist with its movement. They are currently on track to compete at the MATE ROV Midwest Regional Event at Hoffman Estates High School in April, hoping to advance to the World Championship in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada in June.

Next, the team solicited audience participation in a round of trivia recapping the information they had shared. After fielding questions, the team encouraged any interested Upper School students to come to one of their work sessions after school on Monday or Wednesday to learn more and get involved. 

Click here for photos from this Morning Ex or the US MATE ROV team working.