Top Honors for Staples Underwater Robotics Team

A team of Staples High School students engaged in underwater robotics today won top honors at a competition in Sandwich, Massachusetts and a right to advance to an international competition. Team Curriodyssea, made up of students Nick Durkin, John McNab, and Daniel Westphal (all 10th graders) and Nathan Wang (9th grader), competed in the Marine Advanced Technology Education Center’s (MATE) New England Regional Competition. The MATE competition requires teams to design, build, and program underwater remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), utilizing math, engineering, and computer science skills. The ROVs are challenged to perform missions (in a swimming pool) modeled after scenarios from the undersea workplace. Curriodyssea came home with first place awards in engineering evaluation, mission (for highest scoring ROV on the underwater challenges), technical report, and poster display. By winning first place overall, they qualified to compete in Long Beach, California on June 23-25, where their underwater ROV (named H2rOver) will face 27 other teams from the United States, Canada, Asia, Europe, and Africa. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Contributed photo