MATE on the 2017 MATE international ROV competition

MATE’s mission is to use marine technology to create interest in and improve science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and to provide the marine technical workforce with well-educated professionals.  A hallmark of all MATE’s programs, products, and services is that they are aligned with ocean workforce research and trends. 

The 2017 MATE international ROV competition will take place in June 2017 at Long Beach City College in Long Beach, California, USA.

The Texas regional competition will be in April. 

Community Introduction with related Community activity photos:

Our team is mostly made up of middle and high school students from Logos Prep Academy, but also includes homeschoolers who currently take college courses at the community college.

Last year’s competition included the challenge to think outside our Earthly environment – to design a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) that could be sent to explore the oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa. This extra-terrestrial challenge immediately intrigued our team and we focused our initial planning to assure an ROV that was small and light to meet the additional size restrictions imposed by space travel. In addition, we proposed an ROV that was “space friendly”, i.e. a design that could be repaired or remodeled using technology aboard a spacecraft. For this reason, we chose an abundance of 3D printed parts and laser cut acrylic sheeting for the main body of the ROV. Team members utilize their in-house 3D printers and laser cutters using student designs created in AutoDesk Inventor Professional. The sensors and manipulators were designed separately. Our vision was this ROV could be recycled, reused, and repurposed in transit or upon landing on Europa.  Techno Marine Robotics met the challenge with QUBE.

Our team believes in building vehicles as simple as possible but we also realize that complex situations require complex designs. Instead of focusing on fancy topside controls and complex hydraulics, we focused on the essentials onboard controls and a multi-environmental design. Programming of the QUBE is entirely student-written coding; the ROV is managed through its onboard microcontroller, receiving commands from the topside pilot who utilizes two PlayStation 2 DualShock 2 controllers. The ROV has the capability to be repurposed for subsea use, as a track mounted terrestrial vehicle, or a space launched extra- terrestrial subsea ROV.

We entered this new division with high hopes. We faced a near company ending failure of the control enclosure in the last week of testing.  We focused on engineering not only a fix but a better solution, removing the box type enclosure and adding a clear tube enclosure for greater pressure resistance. The Techno Marine Robotics team has strived for success, and we present a ROV for Multi-Environments.