FORKS — Students across the North Olympic Peninsula vied during the second annual Olympic Coast Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) remote-operated vehicles (ROV) competition.
Fourteen teams, made up of 56 students, gathered to demonstrate their year-long efforts of designing, developing and piloting ROVs at the Forks Athletic & Aquatic Center on May 19.
The competition’s theme was “Jet City: Airplanes, Earthquakes and Energy, with the challenges replicating real-world scenarios found here in the Pacific Northwest.”
Students were required to pass multiple technical and safety inspections, deliver an oral presentation about their engineering design and provide a marketing display.
The final challenge was for students to complete missions at the aquatic center’s pool which emulated real world situations where ROVs complete work.
The results are:
• Scout: First place, Galaxy, Lake Quinault; second place, KMVT, Lake Quinault; third place, MJAG, Forks.
• Navigator: First place, Dominators, Forks; second place, The Leviathian Project, Forks; third place, The Justice League, Forks.
• Honorable mentions: Top Poster, The Leviathan Project, Forks; Top Presentation, Galaxy, Lake Quinault; Team Spirit, Lake Quinault School; Macgyver Award, Seawolf Solutions, Quinault Tribal School; Most Safety Concious, Taholah Chitwins; Design Elegance, Quinault Underwater Industries, Lake Quinault Middle School; and Excellence in Organization The Justice League, Forks.
Michael Kenney of Lake Quinault Middle School received the Mentor of the Year Award.
Kenney built the ROV program at Lake Quinault Middle School, sending four teams to the competition this year, according to a news release.
The school fielded one team during last year’s MATE competition.
The event was sponsored by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administrtion Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary and MATE.
For more information, contact Nicole Harris at 360-406-2082 or nicole.harris@noaa.gov.
