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Written: June 26, 2024
By Barbara Meister
We all stood up and cheered at the top of our lungs when MATE Official Matt Gardner announced “X Academy Hephaestus Robotics” as the 3rd place winner in the Ranger division!
Every team member put in many hours of work to make sure the team performed at the top of its abilities at the competition. And you and your fellow donors came through for them, meeting the $40,000 fundraising goal that ensured every team member could afford to be there—thank you so much!
The students earned among the top scores for their engineering presentation, marketing poster, and “product demonstration” — performing underwater tasks with their two robotics devices: ROV (remotely operated vehicle) “Talos IV” and autonomous vertical profiling float “Vulcan III.”
On Thursday, the first day of the competition, the first of two product demonstrations was a little rough. The students operating the ROV felt good about their performance, and the ROV itself met all their expectations (engineering serendipity!). Meanwhile, the float failed to resurface during its first vertical profile, repeating a problem that occurred at the regional. That evening, as many of the students practiced and edited their engineering presentation, the float team reworked their code. They extended the amount of time the float spent draining its buoyancy engine to resurface. Then they tested in the hotel pool.
On Friday morning, despite the early hour of 8:30 Eastern Daylight Time, the team gave a stellar 15-minute engineering presentation to two judges who were clearly impressed. They asked how the students learned Robotics Operating System, the Python library the students use to operate the ROV, and they complimented the compact design of the ROV. The team earned a perfect score!!! All those late night practices paid off! Watch the presentation on YouTube.
Then it was on to the ‘second chance’ pool run at 3:00 in the afternoon. Despite the heat, the team insisted on wearing the X Academy signature red coveralls. Parent volunteers kept them cool with ice packs as they waited to enter the pool. They felt confident and at the same time, nervously hopeful that the float would work.
The float team of Matt and Uriel went to the 12-foot side of the pool and deployed the float. When it resurfaced, teammates and parents roared with excitement (and relief) from the bleachers! The float autonomously sank and resurfaced twice, collected temperature and pressure data and transmitted it to the float team laptop, earning all possible points!! Perseverance through problem solving pays off!
At the same time, Max was at the top of his game piloting the ROV, quickly checking off the mission tasks. With five minutes left, the team managed to achieve a few more tasks than the previous day, adding to a total point load of 285, the fourth highest among the high school teams.
Another element of competition is a marketing display. Kai took the lead on designing and implementing the marketing poster and his attention to detail earned the team a perfect score!
We knew the team did well, but we didn’t know how well until Saturday night’s awards ceremony. The team and mentors were overwhelmed with joy and a strong sense of achievement!!
