Competition registration opens 1 December 2015.

The 2016 MATE international ROV competition will be held 23-25 June at the NASA Johnson Space Center's Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston, Texas.

The MATE Center uses underwater robots – also known as remotely operated vehicles or ROVs – to teach science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and prepare students for technical careers. Working in partnership with the Marine Technology Society ROV Committee, MATE created the ROV competition in support of this mission.

The competition challenges K-12, community college, and university students from all over the world to design and build ROVs to tackle missions modeled after scenarios from the ocean workplace. The competition’s class structure of beginner, intermediate, and advanced complements the education pipeline by providing students with the opportunity to build upon their skills – and the application of those skills – as they engineer increasingly more complex ROVs for increasingly more complex mission tasks.

The MATE competition requires students to think of themselves as entrepreneurs and transform their teams into companies that manufacture, market, and sell “products.” In addition to engineering ROVs, the students prepare technical reports, poster displays, and engineering presentations that are delivered to working professionals who serve as competition judges.

For more on eligibility, regional competitions, and more, visit here.

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