A team of high school students primarily from the Lehigh Valley that includes a Saucon Valley resident will travel to St. Johns, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada from June 24-28, where they will compete against top teams from around the world in the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center’s 14th Annual International Student ROV Competition. This year’s theme is ROVs in Extreme Environments: Science and Industry in the Arctic.
ROVs, or remotely operated vehicles, are underwater vessels that can be used for a variety of tasks by polar scientists as well as the oil and gas industry, for example.
The local team, known as pROVe (Pennsylvania ROV Engineers), recently placed first overall at their state’s regional competition–the MATE Pennsylvania ROV Challenge at Villanova University, which was held May 9. This will be the fourth time traveling to the international competition for the team, which is made up of Timothy Gahman of Lower Saucon Township; Natalie Sampsell, John Sampsell and Hannah Smith of Macungie; Benjamin Green of Bethlehem; and Noah Jarratt of Harleysville.
For this year’s competition, pROVe designed and built an ROV capable of completing a series of missions such as: inspecting icebergs and determining their threat levels; testing the grounding of anodes; performing routine pipeline maintenance; and gathering and observing samples of marine wildlife. The team was required to compile a 20-page technical report, create a poster display, give a presentation to a panel of judges and design a team T-shirt.
In addition to being awarded first place overall at the regional competition, the team took third place for their technical presentation, second place in the underwater mission demonstration, first place for their poster display and first place for their technical report.
“Despite compounding technical difficulties, we were able to pull through in the regional competition,” said Green. “We are very grateful for everyone who helped us get this far.”
To follow the pROVe team, like their Facebook page, and follow them on Google+ and Twitter.
More information about pROVe is available online at www.proveteam.com.
Note: The information in this story as well as the accompanying photographs were contributed by Christine Gahman.
