2013 Competition Plans

I've spent some time giving you a look at my past, so let's take a break from that and look at what is happening right now. My club is in the design/prototype phase of building this year's ROV. You'll hear all about last years project a little further down the road and why we can't/don't want to reuse it. There are so many things I want to explain right now, so this post will jump around a bit.

1) The theme of the competition this year is Ocean Observing Systems, which is exactly what it sounds like: collecting data to observe the oceanic waters and their activity. Here are the tasks that we have to complete at the competition:


Task #1:  Complete a primary node and install a secondary node on the seafloor.
Task #2:  Design, construct, and install a transmissometer to measure turbidity over time.
Task #3:  Replace an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) on a mid-water column mooring
platform.
Task #4:  Remove biofouling from structures and instruments within the observatory.

If you think that sounds like a foreign language, don't worry, I was totally lost at first too. I'll go into detail about the missions soon. If you understand all of those tasks then that's fantastic!

2) Here is a picture of the ROV we are building:

3) An explanation of the competition: The competition is set up so that MATE (Marine Advance Technology Education Center) represents a corporation that is seeking a company (the school teams) to design and build a ROV to help them complete a task. Each team is presents themselves as a company with a CEO, Lead Engineer, Financial Officer, etc. They build a ROV that can complete the tasks and compete for the "contract", the grand prize at the competition. The competition is open to any high school or undergraduate students world wide.

The first part of the competition is to complete the missions are best as possible, but typically only a couple teams are able to do everything in the allotted 15min. The second part of the competition is the evaluation of our team as a whole. We write a technical report outlining each aspect of the ROV and why we designed it the way we did. Each team also gives a presentation to a panel of judges and makes a display board with information about their company.

That's all I'll bombard you with for now. Check back tomorrow, for another Monday Memory!