Divya Kumar
News Editor

Last year’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has caused a stir on all levels, all the way down to local high schools. The Coppell High School Underwater Robot, or MATE, team recently competed in the Texas regional competition that dealt with such a hypothetical situation of cleaning up an oil spill and won first place, now moving on to internationals.

The purpose of the MATE program is to allow students to learn about and apply marine technology. This year, the 10 students that the CHS MATE team comprises of gathered together to design and build an underwater ROV, or remotely operated vehicle, to perform certain tasks, such as capping a simulated oil spill. While the ROV completes these tasks underwater, it is operated from the surface, utilizing cameras mounted on the robot to allow the operators to see its actions. In addition to these cameras, the ROV has seven motors on it to control different aspects.

“[To build the robot] we met over the summer and through the fall, coming up with general plans, and in November the actual competition plans were released,” MATE captain Hunter Heaton said. “These last two months we have been working on the robot almost everyday. We used the snow days, spring breaks, and the TAKS test late arrival days to our advantage and met up.”

In the simulation for this year’s competition, which took place at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston, the ROV is required to remove a damaged section of a pipe, close a valve, cap a pipe, take a water sample and collect organisms for examination from the oil spill site it is placed within. The team was also to come up with a fake company name – Hydro-Development Systems, Inc. – under whom they would present aspects of their robot, simulating a more realistic situation.

The competition comprises of two “missions” in which teams are to score a respective number of points in their task, as well as an engineering evaluation that comprises of a technical presentation. The CHS team was able to score 285.56 points in the first task out of 300, 150 points in the next section, and 79 out of 90 points from the evaluation section, totaling with a grand score of 364.56.

“[Our score] is exceptionally high,” MATE sponsor Bill Montana said. “The second place team scored 329.5 points. We were the only team to complete all tasks, and we did it in less than the allotted time of fifteen minutes.”

Though the team experienced great success this year, such has not been the case in the past. The previous year, the students worked hard at the robot, pulling two all-nighters in the process, but the process had not begun early enough to allow time for adequate research and testing. A total of 20 points were scored last year. But rather than taking this number to heart, the team used it as a motivational tool.

“We certainly did not want to repeat last year,” Montana said. “However, that was not the focus. Instead, students chose to focus on excellence.”

Such focus clearly paid off, as the MATE team will now be advancing to the International Competition, set to take place on June 16-18, once again at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab.

“Our chances are looking pretty good, but only if we practice and practice operating the robot,” MATE Secretary Laxmi Dongur said. “The night before the competition, we all stayed up working on the presentation and you could tell everyone was nervous and tense. It was a huge deal because there was a running rumor that if we failed the regionals they would cancel next year’s team from competing, so it was just truly amazing.”

According to the results from the competition, the CHS MATE team is ranked second best in the world, a title they are set to defend at the upcoming International competition.

“We wanted perfection and we made it happen,” Heaton said. “I’m proud of our team and the dedication we put in to make it happen. We’ve been working hard on our technical report [for the upcoming competition]; it’s all about practice. We want to do a demo possibly and are looking for money to help cover the robot and cover the costs of the program for next year.”

Regardless of what the results of the upcoming competition may be, the success that the team has faced thus-far is astounding.

“We were all absolutely giddy after winning,” Montana said. “One prominent goal was to do better than a particular unnamed team at all costs. This team has won the Texas Regional for the last six years. We blew them out of the water – pun intended.”