Linn-Benton Community College’s ROV team “ROVRunners” came in 10th at this year’s MATE (Marine Advanced Technology Education) international ROV competition held in Kingsport, Tenn. LB was one of 30 schools at the competition – the best of an original group of approximately 300. Last year, the team also made the top 10 at the competition.
Making the top third of scores wasn’t the only good news LB received at the event, with the ROVRunners winning a first-place award in technical presentation.
Below is a schoolwide message from LBCC physics instructor Greg Mulder recapping the team’s results over the past week:
The LBCC ROV team is in the airport getting ready to board the plane for home. The final day of competition and the final results went very well for LBCC.
An important part of the MATE ROV competition is that this competition is more of a collaboration where all the teams work together to build tools and procedures to understand the universe in which we live. Consequently, the last round was the collaborative mission where you work with everyone, four teams at once, to build an underwater structure. Attached is a picture of us performing the collaborative mission – I’m embarrassed to say that I only got the LBCC team in the photos; but, you can see the collaborative structure in the mid-build process on the screen in the photo.
The closing ceremony also went well for LBCC. There are only 3 full-team awards given at the University level and LBCC won one of them coming in first-place for the technical presentation. The technical presentation is where the entire team gets together and discusses with a panel of judges that build rationale and process of building the ROV. A large part of being a STEM student is learning that failure is often the first (and often the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th) step of learning. The LBCC team this year was full of people who were enthusiastic in building a component of the ROV and then modifying repeatedly until something reliable and often looking much different than what they started out with appeared.
Now, despite the fact that I just espoused how important collaboration is at the MATE competition, I’m happy to mention that we came 10th out [of] the 30 college and university teams that made it to the international level and that there were ~300 colleges and universities who started this process 9 months ago.
But, even more fun, LBCC beat Purdue this year. For the past two years, Purdue’s final score would just edge out above LBCC’s by less than 1% of the total score each year. I’m happy to report that this year LBCC was ahead of Purdue 468 points to 465 points. (And more important, we still like each other a whole bunch)
Attached is a photo from the opening of the closing ceremony where the American Samoa team sang a traditional Samoan song for us. I must admit that in the middle of the song I teared up a little bit – I looked to my left and my colleague Rick from UW also had tears in his eyes a little bit. In the photo, you can see the American Samoa team in their pink shirts and then to the right and left you can see a flag from each country who qualified to send a team.
Also attached is a photo of the LBCC team gathered together in our lab tent. I want to reiterate that we have amazing students we have here at LBCC. These students have been working every week for the past nine months. Besides building an awesome ROV they have been working for months on teaching basic circuit principles with the Albany Boys and Girls club, and doing well in their classes.
Meanwhile, the team is very grateful for all of the support we have received. As a co-curricular club, LBCC has provided space and some funds to get the team started each year. This year, the Oregon Space Grant Consortium (OSGC) provided the $10,000 needed to bring the team to the MATE International ROV competition that took place here in Kingsport, Tennessee – we definitely wouldn’t be here without the OSGC support. Additionally, the Albany YMCA graciously allowed us to use their pool on many weekends and miniROV Physics helped with more funding mostly for food throughout the year.
Finally, donations from individuals to the LBCC Foundation were greatly appreciated. Not only did a last infusion of funds from community members and past LBCC ROV team members help get us a little more badly needed equipment, but it also gave the team, and maybe mostly me, an emotional boost at the end of the school year.
We’re being called to board the plane now. I hope everyone back home at school is all geared up for the first day of classes and I wish everyone a great summer!
To learn more about the MATE competition, you can visit the MATE website here or a past Commuter article here for a quick recap.