Dundee's Grove City Campus triumph at RGU ROV competition

The team was taking part in the Scottish MATE ROV competition, co-ordinated and hosted by RGU, which saw 11 school teams from around the country put underwater robots, which they had designed and built, through a series of missions for a place in the international final.

Grove City Campus emerged victorious, after a panel of industry experts scored the teams on how well they completed the missions, as well as taking into consideration the technical reports, poster displays, and engineering presentations the pupils were required to produce.

Another team from Dundee’s Grove Academy picked up the second place and Robert Gordon’s College took the third spot.

This year the pupils have been tasked with ‘Innovations for Inshore’, where they had to use their Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) to inspect and repair a mockup dam, monitor water quality and recover a submerged historical artefact.

The major STEM initiative aims to inspire future engineers through hands-on experience of designing (ROVs) used underwater in the oil and gas, defence, oceanology and marine renewables industries.

It is one of 24 regional heats held around the world by the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Centre in California and will see the winning school team travel to compete in this year’s international final which will be held at Kingsport, Tennessee.

RGU engineering lecturer and competition co-ordinator, Graeme Dunbar, said: “A huge congratulations to our winners from Grove Academy and to all the teams which took part, it was a terrific day and everyone should be proud of the hard work they have put in.  

“The event is always a huge amount of fun and we are extremely grateful to all of our sponsors for their continued support.

“The experience the pupils gain from the competition is invaluable and the support from our industry mentors provides them with such great insight into engineering and general business principles.”

The MATE competition requires students to think of themselves as entrepreneurs and transform their teams into companies that manufacture, market, and sell ‘products’. 

BP North Sea has been a major sponsor of the competition since its launch and Subsea UK and ROVOP have this year continued their support of the competition.