MATE Competition
Hydrothermal Vents Have Never Been So Hot!
Article and Photos by Maggie Linskey Merrill, Contributor
Saturday April 28 was another brisk day at the west end of the Cape Cod Canal. What a fitting place for the 2008 NE Regional MATE ROV Design Competition. Fourteen teams arrived at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts with vehicles, umbilicals, computers, tool kits, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, you name it somebody had one. The kids were all very generous with their tools and their knowledge helping the newbies get ready for the big day. The favored team, because they placed two years in a row, Milton Academy came in with its usual, unusually simple vehicle and a boat load of confidence. After all, this was the sixth competition that their mentor Tom Gagnon had lead and they were ready for the games to begin. At the end of the day, the team with the highest overall score will advance to the International Competition being held June 26-28 at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California. This year there are qualifying events in Hawaii, Florida, Michigan, Virginia, Southern and Northern California, Massachusetts, Washington,
Marine Academy of Science and Technology (MAST 1) Autobot ROV team member, Luke Bell pulling their vehicle out of the pool after a failed mission.
(Photo Credit: Maggie L. Merrill, Marine Marketing Services)
Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Scotland and Hong Kong. The breadth and variety of the competition has really blossomed over its seven year history as seen in the international entries. The purpose of the competition is to provide students with an experience that helps them understand what it is like to be part of a design team, dealing with all the headaches of getting something done with a tight budget and in a short period of time. Enabling students to meet potential employers and professionals from the university sector during their high school years is another benefit of participating in this competition. The ocean science and technology field needs more engineers, scientists and business people take advantage of the pportunities in the market place. By partnering with the Ridge 2000 project, the Marine Advanced Technology Education project (MATE), is hoping to increase student's awareness of the biological, chemical, geological and oceanographic processes that drive the many ocean ridges that are in constant movement far below the ocean's surface. In fact the mission of this year's competition was developed to highlight the ridges. The 2008 mission was developed to simulate an ROV descending to 2500 meters depth to view hydrothermal vents and to simulate freeing Ocean Bottom Seismographs (OBS) that had been buried in a recent undersea volcanic eruption. While down there the ROV must also retrieve three lava samples, the size of small crabs. The third and final mission is for the vehicle to move to a vent (pvc pipe with a hot water hose running out of it) and take the temperature of the water. A group of dedicated individuals from industry and academia convene for the day to compare how each team performs under pressure. The judges were divided into teams each addressing a specific part of the competition: predive safety check; engineering evaluation; pool missions; poster judging; and written report reviewers. The first order of the day at the pool building at MMA,
June 2008
26 MTR
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