Post Competition

Excerpt from NDs Blog:

"The competition went much better than we ever expected. It would have gone even better had one of our cameras, the one mounted facing the docking skirt, not broken. The night before, when we arrived at Buzzard's Bay, we worked out the buoyancy so that it was only slightly positively buoyant and so that it sat level in the water. We chose TF to control the ROV since he was the best out of the three of us. At the actual competition, we were able to maneuver the ROV around the perimeter of the submarine and identify the five damage points in under four minutes, including the time it took for us to justify to the judges that they had placed two "B"s on the submarine rather than a "B" and a "C". TF was able to unlock the hatch in the 8th minute, but then our one camera blacked out. For the remaining 12 minutes, TF continued to try to open the hatch and dock the ROV. Unfortunately, it was not possible. We received 55/300 points available for the mission, for scouting the perimeter and identifying the damage points, unlocking the hatch, and bringing down the airline. We could have done even better had our camera not broken. We had popped two fuses, but we were able to finish with the third one.Our presentation also went very well. We were able to explain our design with no problems and the judges seemed very interested.All in all, I am very happy with the outcome of the ROV. I am proud to be a member of TEAM MAST. "

We really feel that comparatively the MAST ROV team did well. While at the compeition, we spoke to many of the others teams present, esspecially HTHS. We saw that other teams had 10+ people working on all aspects of the project, they also had major instructor help, a budget exceeding $2,000 or more, and they did not have to conform to curriculum standards (i.e. make design plans, evaluations, basic work assignments). The MAST team had a three person team (split up in classes), not any major instructor help (like other teams had; WG commented on the overly helpful instructors), less than a $200 budget, and a curriculum to follow. Looking at both of these scenerios and knowing that our ROV succeeded in the pool, I feel that the comp. was a success.