HKUST Robotics Team Named Champion in Hong Kong Regional of MATE International ROV Competition for 10 Years
HKUST Robotics Team Named Champion in Hong Kong Regional of MATE International ROV Competition for 10 Years
The HKUST Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) Team has been named champion in the 16th Hong Kong Regional of the MATE International ROV Competition. The ROV Team, a sub-team of the HKUST Robotics Team, will represent Hong Kong in the MATE International ROV Competition 2021 this summer.
Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the team will compete and interact with other regional winning teams across the US and around the world in the international competition online for the first time. Named 2021 MATE ROV Competition VR World, the international contest will make use of virtual reality to facilitate social engagement, peer networking, and shared experience that students value most about the competition.
The Hong Kong regional competition this year was held online for the first time via Zoom, and involved a team presentation. Organized by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Hong Kong on June 12, it attracted excellent local teams from both secondary schools (in Ranger Class) and universities (in Explorer Class).
The HKUST team participated in the ROV regional competition since 2011 and was crowned the champion for 10 straight years. The competition was cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic.
The 2021 team consists of 17 undergraduates from various disciplines and five different parts of the world. Nearly all of them are from Year 1 and Year 2. In the competition, teams had to build underwater robots to tackle simulated real-world tasks, such as live image recognition of changes in coral colonies due to climate change, and retrieval of floating plastic debris in the ocean. They also had to prepare materials to promote their ROV, including a team presentation, marketing display, technical report, and safety documentation. Performance was evaluated by judges from both engineering and business perspectives.
IET is the UK’s largest professional engineering institution, and the IET Hong Kong is the second largest overseas branch. The Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center (located in California, US) and the Marine Technology Society’s ROV Committee have been organizing the MATE International ROV Competition since 2002, to inspire and challenge students to learn and creatively apply STEM to solve real-world problems and strengthen their critical thinking, collaboration, entrepreneurship, and innovation.
This news was prepared with the help of ROV sub-team member Nicholas CHRISTANTO (Year 2, BEng in Computer Science and BBA in General Business Management)