MATE ROV Competition

In 2017 my high school robotics team competed in the yearly MATE competition. The MATE ROV Competition is an underwater robotics competition where teams compete to complete a series of tasks using an ROV (Remote Operated Vehicle). The MATE competition isn’t just about creating a robot but about the whole process of designing and building the robot. To this end, the competition is also judged on a technical presentation, technical report, budget report, and marketing poster which outlines all the aspects of the ROV. The idea behind this is to push ideas of entrepreneurship and innovation beyond just the engineering needed to create an ROV.

My main role in designing our ROV was as a mechanical engineer dealing with the propulsion systems. This included jobs like, creating the propeller designs, evaluating the best positions for the bilge pumps, and wiring the bilge pumps to the main system. The final propeller design we settled upon after multiple iterations of testing was a tri-blade design that we 3-D printed after multiple failed attempts. These attempts in 3-D printing were helpful in giving us an understanding about how 3-D printing works and how to utilize different 3-D printing softwares.

Beyond just building an ROV, we spent lots of time practicing both our writing and speaking skills for the other aspects of the competition. A comprehensive technical report had to be written describing the different aspects of our ROV and our mentors spent a lot of time working on our technical writing skills for this. Mirroring a real project, we were in charge of writing about our assigned duty while also needing to be knowledgeable on the other aspects of the ROV. Another major part of the competition was the technical presentation where you have to give a sales pitch on the cost effectiveness and situational effectiveness of our ROV. To this end, we spent hours practicing our speeches in front of our mentors who’d critique our speaking skills to remove verbal tics, pauses, and other problems with our speaking. This practice not only helped us improve our writing skills but also improved our speaking skills. It made me realize that any career in STEM isn’t just about having skills in science and math but also requires us to be good at other skills such as writing and speaking.

More about the MATE ROV Competition can be found at the MATE ROV website.