Institution news
The Scottish MATE ROV Challenge invites school students from across Scotland to design and build underwater robots – and put them to the test in real conditions.
The RGU event is one of 24 regional heats held around the world by the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Centre in California. RGU is the only establishment in Western Europe to run heats. To date, Scottish MATE ROV has worked with 536 pupils from 34 schools over the past nine years.
The Mintlaw team now has the prestigious honour of competing in Houston, at the 2016 MATE International finals, held at the NASA Johnson Space Centre’s neutral buoyancy lab in June.
Mintlaw beat 10 other schools and colleges, after a panel of industry experts scored the teams on how well they completed the missions, as well as taking into consideration the technical reports, poster displays, and engineering presentations the entrants were required to produce. It is the third time the school has won the competition.
The major STEM initiative aims to inspire future engineers through hands-on experience of designing remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) used underwater in the oil and gas, defence, oceanology and marine renewables industries. With NASA and Oceaneering Space Systems (OSS) looking to make use of ROVs which can operate in the harsh environments of both the deep ocean and outer space, this year’s missions were scenarios inspired by inner and outer space.
Neil Stagg CEng MIMechE mentored the Mintlaw team, and commented that this particular group has done exceptionally well, given their relative youth.
Neil said: “The defined set of robotics missions in this year’s MATE theme combines measurements and survey information to be obtained (underwater) from Europa (one of the Jupiter moons bearing a strong resemblance to our own moon) as well as environmental survey and oil well intervention tasks in the Gulf of Mexico.
“As a chartered engineer, I have encouraged Mintlaw Academy’s team to take up the challenge for technological imagination and entrepreneurship, but keep fundamentals of teamwork, equipment and environmental safety awareness the highest priority.”
BP North Sea has been a major sponsor of the Scottish regional competition since its launch in 2008, with Subsea UK joining the company as headline sponsor for the second year. Additional funding is provided by ROVOP and The Underwater Centre in Fort William.
Joanne McDonald, leader of the Mintlaw Academy team, said: "It’s amazing, it’s taking a bit of time to sink in. As the prizes were being announced we started to think that we hadn’t even placed so we are all so surprised.
“The competition has been great – it has been good working as a team and getting a taste of real life engineering. There’s a few new members on the team this year and I’m really pleased with how everything has come together. All our hard work has paid off – we’re going to Houston!”
Graeme Dunbar CPhys, MIoP, senior RGU electrical engineering lecturer and competition co-ordinator, has run the competition at RGU since 2008. He congratulated all the teams, and praised Mintlaw for their robust, simple design and excellent team work.
He said: “Students have put in a lot of hard work to get to this stage and it is great to see the standards continuing to improve year on year. The MATE ROV Challenge is an excellent opportunity to illustrate STEM and transferable skills such as presentation and entrepreneurialism as part of a wide-ranging project, and I hope that we will see more take-up with heats extending across the UK in the near future.”
He added: “A huge thank you to all our sponsors – BP, Subsea UK, ROVOP and The Underwater Centre – without whom none of this could happen.”