Challenge

Fish ID

The purpose of this challenge is to directly connect a man-made vehicle with the living creatures of the sea to further study their behavior. Even though pictures of fish, and not real organisms, will be used in this challenge, it is supposed to emulate the real challenge faced by ROV engineers to observe marine life.

There is no set time limit for this challenge. However as it tries to simulate real a real world situation, we must take into account the movement of the fish and act fast before they move away from the ROVs field of view.

Also we will rely fully on a camera to watch the organisms, and we might need lights in order to see better. Finally, only a small portion of the sea will be in our field of view, so we will also rely on the ROV movement in order to find and identify the most fish.

In N Out

For this task the team must maneuver in and out of hoops in under 3 minutes. Each hoop that the ROV goes through is one point. What this challenge is emulating is maneuvering through a submarine and being conscious of every angle and dimension that we must move through.

Gone Fishin’

In this challenge, our team has 6 minutes to try and collect as many “organisms” from the benthic realm. ROVs must capture the creatures and bring them to a team member on the surface. The team with the most captured gets the most points. ROVs are used for collecting samples-- both organic and inorganic-- and so this stimulates the gathering of members of an ecosystem.

Operation: Fix It

Modeled after the BP gulf spill of 2010, teams must send out their ROVs to put a cap onto a “leaking oil” well. Points are awarded for completing the task successfully. Because they are unmanned ROVs are able to traverse areas too dangerous or hazardous for manned missions, like the sight of an oil leak. In the actual tragedy ROVs were utilized to try and block the leak, build redirect pipes, and cap the leaking well.