School pupils from across the north-east will gather in Aberdeen tomorrow to tackle a series of intergalactic engineering challenges.
The Scottish leg of the Mate Scotland ROV Challenge is being hosted by Robert Gordon University (RGU) and brings together students from 12 Scottish secondary schools to put underwater robots to the test.
The teenagers will be asked to recreate tackling the murky depths of an ocean on one of Jupiter’s moons with their remotely operated vehicles (ROVs).
The ROVs are used underwater in the oil and gas, defence, oceanology and marine renewables industries and are vital to the offshore operations in the North Sea.
The competition is part of an initiative which aims to inspire a new generation of engineers with hands-on experience.
RGU engineering lecturer Graeme Dunbar, a co-coordinator for the competition, said: “We are very much looking forward to this year’s competition and can’t wait to see how the students have responded to the brief set out by Mate.
“The event is always a huge amount of fun and we are extremely grateful to all of our sponsors for their continued support.”
The RGU event is one of 24 regional heats held around the world by the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Centre in California.
The winning team from each qualifying heat will then travel to compete in this year’s international final at the NASA Johnson Space Centre’s in Texas in June.
With NASA eager to build of ROVs capable of operating in the harsh environments of both the deep ocean and outer space, this year’s missions are scenarios inspired by inner and outer space.
These include operating in the ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa under its ice sheet to collect data and deploy instrumentation as well as collecting samples of deep water corals to assess their health post Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
To date, Scottish Mate ROV has worked with 536 pupils from 34 schools over the past nine years, with Peterhead Academy winning the 2015 competition.
The challenges will take place tomorrow morning at RGU’s Sir Ian Wood building.
Teams from Alford Academy, Banff Academy, Inverurie Academy, Keith Grammar, Mackie Academy, Mintlaw Academy, Peterhead Academy, Portlethen Academy, Robert Gordon College as well as the Aberdeen Sea Cadets will take part.
