LBCC ROV Team Finishes in Top 10 at MATE Competition

by Greg Mulder · July 3, 2023

Only six team members can be on deck for the pool excursion -- the rest of us watch like you can at home. Photos by Greg Mulder.

LONGMONT, Colorado — Day 4 was the last day of the competition. And, something I can’t reiterate enough about the MATE ROV competition is that the competition is more of a collaboration of teams of people from across the world competing together to learn more about the universe we live in.

In the collaboration round we need to work with three other schools to open a chest on the pool floor and release four floats that need to be brought to shore by the ROVs.

Our four teams scored the maximum points!

And … overall … we came in seventh place out of the roughly 200 college and universities that started at the beginning of the year. (Purdue, who we were tied with in the pool yesterday, did eke ahead of us, beating LBCC by four points out of roughly 700 points.)

In the evening was the closing ceremony. By this point, the remains of the destroyed OceanGate submersible had been discovered. This crowd is a crowd of explorers, but as engineers and scientists the group has to understand that we are the ones who have to fight to reduce the odds of tragedy striking.

Remember that this e-mail is a “delayed broadcast” of LBCC’s time at the MATE ROV international competition.

We spent the next 24 hours in Colorado visiting the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, white water rafting down Clear Creek, and dipping our legs in the Indian Springs Hot Springs.

Now, we’ve been back home for a few days. It’s Thursday evening and the group is getting together to a) plan what we are going to do over the next 12 months and b) clean the lab!

Have a great Summer Term Roadrunners!

–Greg