The Challenges

Fish ID

Fish ID involves performing a survey of various marine organisms along a transect by performing a count and identification of each organism seen on the ocean floor. The goal is to successfully identify each marine organism and get a count of each species. This is a common practice in marine science and it is done by many marine scientists in order to keep count of each organism in various environments so we are aware of any changes in the environment. It emulates the way scientists keep track of organisms in various environments. There is no set time limit, but that might be subject to change in the future.

Gone Fishin’

The goal of this task is to have each ROV pick up as many Schworoctopus as possible from one general benthic environment. This relates to marine science because many scientists who go out on real dives with ROVs must try attempting to pick up specimens for things such as observation and tagging. This is trying to emulate the situation in which we as scientists would need to easily collect a fish for examination or collection. There is no time limit set for this task yet because it is the first year that we are holding this task in the ROV games. For this task we will need to have something on our ROV that will be capable of easily picking up the Schworoctopus easily and bringing it back to the surface in a timely manner.

Operation Fix It

The goal of this task is to have each ROV pick up the oil well cap and successfully place it over the leaking oil pipe to stop the oil from leaking into the environment. This relates to marine science because in a real life situation there could actually be an oil leak that would actually need to be capped in order to protect the marine environment. This emulates real life because ROVs have been used in the past with oil spills in order to try and control and minimize the amount of oil coming out. There is no time limit set for this task as of yet. For this task our ROV will have to be built with some sort of arm or hook that we can pick the cap up with and then our ROV will have to be able to hover stably while placing the cap on top of the leaking pipe.












In n Out

The goal of In n Out is to successfully maneuver through a set series of obstacles by traversing through hoops. The time constraint is 3 minutes to go through as many hoops in the obstacle course as possible. This relates to marine science because marine scientists have to build ROVs so they can successfully traverse through obstacles in  real world environments. It emulates when ROVs need to maneuver through various terrains in order to complete real world tasks successfully.