FIRST team at underwater competition

[N7UJJ]

Carl Hayden's Falcon Robotics, team 842 participated for the third year in an underwater robot competition. We compete in the "explorer" or college level class. Once again a FIRST high school team beat all the other colleges and universities, except one from Canada. (Perhaps U.S. culture has taken it's eye off the education engineering ball?)

If you are interested in pictures:
http://www.phxhs.k12.az.us/education...60&pagecat=209
Details about our ROV:
http://www.phxhs.k12.az.us/education...60&pagecat=209

Here is our Press Release:


Carl Hayden Finishes 2nd in National Underwater Robotics Event

Phoenix—Carl Hayden High School’s Robotics team, competing against college and university engineering students from throughout North America, finished runners-up in a national ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) championship Saturday at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
The Falcons, the only high school team in the Explorer division, were edged by The Marine Institute of Memorial University from Newfoundland, Canada in the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) ROV Championship. The second-place finish marks the third consecutive year the Falcons placed in the top three in this event. Two years ago, Hayden gained worldwide notoriety when it shocked MIT and others to win the championship.
The team of Cristian Arcega, Adam Burch, Daniel Federle, Annalisa Regalado, Lorenzo Santillan and Pablo Santillan coached by teachers Fredi Lajvardi and Allan Cameron, surprised the competition and judges again, when they built and piloted two ROVs simultaneously to complete the mission tasks faster and more efficiently, while staying within the mission parameters. A large ROV, named Otis, (after the elevator) used higher voltage and current to navigate up and down the 40-foot deep Neutral Buoyancy Lab pool. It was teamed with a smaller finesse robot called Ipski-Pipski to conduct a series of tasks. The team was also judged on an engineering evaluation and technical report.
Many of the robots were overcome by water pressure, and never made it back to the surface in the allotted 30 minutes. Halfway through the Falcons’ mission, the casing that held the electronics on Ipski-Pipski crushed in. The robot lost volume and flotation and was unable to rise to the surface on its own power. The students pulled the impaired robot to the surface (incurring a 5 point penalty), made some quick repairs and sent the ROVs down to finish the mission in 26.8 minutes, the second-fastest time.
“The most rewarding part of the competition was to watch our students diagnose the problem when Ipski was almost crushed, and quickly come to a consensus on a possible solution, haul the ROV up, add buoyancy, and continue the mission, while the clock was ticking with no room for error,” coach Dr. Allan Cameron said. “They never gave up and pulled off a successful mission out of a near disaster. They were a professional engineering team.”
Nine of the 16 teams failed to resurface, including MIT, marking the third consecutive year that little Carl Hayden has defeated the top engineering students in the nation.
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A more detaild account can be read at:
http://www.hispanicengineer.com/artm...icle_181.shtml

From past experience, we are pretty sure this story will receive not only local media attention, but also national coverage. We'll see.

There are a number of FIRST high schools in the ranger (or high school division) and they have quite an advantage over the "civilians".

Email me if you want more information