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. The ROV building and competition points, and points gained from the poster.

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. 300 possible points will be awarded for this part of the competition. Below is a simple point breakdown of the poster.

Teams in 6th grade or higher are required to include subpoints in their posters. For 5th grade and lower, the subpoints are entirely optional.

1. Abstract - Overview of ROV, all its components (controls, wires, tethers, propellers, hooks, body, etc), with description of how the components work together to create a functioning ROV (75 points possible).

   1. Discuss the principles of electrical signals and how your ROV functions on those signals.

2. ROV Research - Write at least 150 words about how ROVs are used in real world applications (75 points possible).

   1. Discuss both a current application and a future (prototype) application.

3. Research and write about a potential engineering career related to any component of your ROV, i.e., electrical, mechanical, chemical, computer, manufacturing, civil. Discuss the training and schooling required to become “that type” of engineer. (75 points possible).

   1. Discuss what the job would require, and the benefits of a career in that field (salary, growth, opportunities, etc.) 

4. Build process - describe the process of building your ROV. What went well? What challenges did you come across? How did you solve those challenges? (75 points possible).

   1. Explain how you could add to your ROV design. What functions could you implement autonomously? What physical components on your ROV could you upgrade to improve reliability? What components do you think would be fun/interesting to add?