This year’s competition is to ensure the health and well-being of the sea turtles and demonstrate your capability as a Marine Robotics Engineer

As Marine Robotics Engineers working alongside Marine Biologists, you are tasked with studying the patterns of Green Sea Turtles at the Great Barrier Reef during nesting season. Many turtles are returning to lay their eggs, but you’ve noticed some are exhibiting unusual discolorations from algae on their shells. While green algae is known to be harmless, other algae types could be harmful.

Your mission is to:

1. Remove the algae: Clean the turtles' shells, ensuring that only the green algae (pool rings) remain.

2. Collect and analyze algae samples: Retrieve samples of all algae types (pool rings) excluding green for scientific analysis and bring them back to the surface. There are 4 different color pool rings, green, yellow, red, and blue and two of each color.

3. Clean the ocean floor: Collect and dispose of litter left by humans from the ocean floor.

The video demonstrates how to perform the tasks for the competition.

For your reference, you can view a document with the competition props here.

Scoring

Scoring is based on two separate parts:

1. The ROV building and competition

2. Poster (60 points possible)

For your reference, you can view the ROV competition score sheet here and the Poster competition score sheet here.

ROV Competition:

Competition points will be awarded as you complete certain tasks. Each team has 10 minutes to complete the tasks.

Task #1: Deploy your robot: 50 pts

Task #2: Tag each affected turtle (place the original pool ring on the turtle’s tail): 200 pts

Task #3: Remove harmful algae (per type, excluding green algae): 50 pts each

Task #4: Retain healthy algae (keep the green pool rings on the turtle): 50 pts each

Task #5: Retrieve and bring back algae samples (per different type): 150 pts each

Task #6: Clean the ocean floor (per piece of garbage collected): 25 pts each

Poster Points:

You will be required to make a poster for the UUR competition. 60 possible points will be awarded for this part of the competition. Below is a simple point breakdown of the poster.

1. Question (5 points possible) - The poster should include a main question about underwater robotics. How clear and interesting is the question?

2. Design (15 points possible) - Does the poster explain how you designed, built, and tested the robot? The steps should include diagrams or pictures. How clear are the steps and diagrams or pictures?

3. Creativity (10 points possible) - Is the poster design engaging and well thought out? Is the use of things such as colors, images, and layout contributing to the poster’s purpose and appeal?

4. Data Collection (10 points possible) - complete 1 of the following options:

   1. Does the poster include data collected for the main question? Is the data presented clearly and organized into charts, graphs, or tables? How well does the data capture and document the testing process?

   2. What was learned in the project (show how you learned what you learned. I.e., if you made mistakes while building your ROV, show what mistakes were made, and then in the “analysis” section as listed below, discuss and show how you overcame or remedied the failures/mistakes.

5. Analysis (10 points possible) - How thoughtful and clear is the analysis of the data? This analysis can include what you learned during the project. To what extent is the analysis written in a way that is easy to understand? How well does the analysis connect back to the main research question?

6. Conclusion (10 points possible) - How well does the poster summarize the overall project and what was learned? To what extent does the conclusion make sense based on the data and analysis? How clearly does the conclusion explain the robot’s performance? Does the conclusion include improvements for next time?