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MATE
About MATE
About MATE
The Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center was established in 1997 thanks to a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation's Advance Technical Education (ATE) Program.
Please learn more about MATE on the official site.
NASA describes MATE as:
The MATE (Marine Advanced Technology Education) Center uses underwater robots – also known as remotely operated vehicles or ROVs – to teach science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and prepare students for technical careers.
Working in partnership with the Marine Technology Society ROV Committee, MATE created the ROV competition as a way to:
Engage students in STEM and expose them to science & tech careers
Encourage students to develop and apply technical, teamwork, and problem solving skills
Provide funds, materials, and technical expertise to support student learning provide industry with skilled individuals who can fill workforce needs
The MATE competition challenges K-12, community college, and university students from all over the world to design and build ROVs to tackle missions modeled after scenarios from the ocean workplace.
Focus for 2024
Focus for 2024
From the official MATE website:
From expanding the Global Ocean Observing System to protecting and restoring ecosystems and biodiversity and unlocking ocean-based solutions to climate change, the 2024 competition mission tasks focus on SOLUTIONS that include ocean observing assets for data collection, reimagining the utility of telecommunications cables, administering probiotics for diseased coral, identifying healthy habitats for lake sturgeon, and deploying GO-BGC floats to monitor ocean health.
The ocean we need for the future we want.
We acknowledge and embrace the UN's "10 Challenges - 10 Years - One Ocean" and task our MATE competition community to design and build a remotely operated vehicle and the necessary sensors, tooling, and complementary technologies to monitor the health of the aquatic habitats of our Blue Planet, so that we can proactively and confidently answer the question "how do we move from the ocean we have to the ocean we want?"
Training
Training
Coaches attend the winter training with hands-on learning about the competition; including rules, tournament, and related equipment.
Practice & Design
Practice & Design
Despite bad weather, a student's family near campus let students get in a little last minute practice to become accustomed to the controls.
Unexpected bad weather resulted in all after school activities cancelled on the day we'd organized to test the finished ROVs.
A parent brought up a small inflatable pool to test them the next day. We were able to test all three ROVs, verifying all control boxes worked and all cabling was water-tight.
Planning and preparation for student presentation as well as ROV and Controller construction; including wiring, heat sealing
Learning to solder via instructional videos and teacher guidance.
When successful, the LED lights up red or green via a directional switch.
Competition Day
Competition Day
Three groups of WAIS students competing, a middle school team (Catfish 1), upper school team (Catfish 2), and a mixed team (Catfish 1.5).
Students reviewing their scheduled times and prepare for ROV inspection. All of our ROVs passed inspection, minor adjustments made as suggested.
Teams operate their ROVs in attempt to complete as many challenges as possible within a set time period.
There are several rounds and different challenges are worth different numbers of points. There are no practice rounds, but each team does have a few minutes to prep at the pool before the round begins.
* Not Pictured: The competition also included student presentations.
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