Contest takes students’ robots underwater

For three years the Coast Guard has been working with Hawaii students, five classrooms at a time, to drum up interest in underwater robotics.

This year, the Coast Guard and Navy reached far more students and got them excited about the subject by holding their first-ever underwater robotics competition on Saturday. The SeaPerch Hawaii Challenge drew 120 kids from 12 schools, competing with 17 robots, said Coast Guard Cmdr. Bryan Dailey, the event’s organizer.

"I wouldn’t have been involved in science and math if it weren’t for this," said Grace Nastase, 11, whose Mokapu Elementary School fifth-grade team took second place.

Fifth- through eighth-graders showed off their math, science and robot-building skills by competing Saturday at the Coast Guard Base Honolulu’s Sand Island pool, as family members, teachers and principals cheered on their kids from the sidelines.

Students, using hand-held controls at one end of the pool, guided their robots as they snaked through hoops, while another student near the middle of the sidelines gave directions. In the deep-water challenge, the robots picked off rings and dunked them into baskets.

Nastase’s teammate, Eden Batt, 11, said she learned to solder to put together their robot, but emphasized: "One of the most important things I’ve learned is how to work as a team and how to talk to each other. Some of our kids didn’t like to talk and were really shy."

Dailey said the event will be used as a model to teach robotics. This year, they held building seminars, with professionals assisting, and practice sessions in the pool.

Students take a "pile of parts" and "build this thing from scratch," Dailey said. They had to solder connections, waterproof the motors, work on buoyancy and ballast, and configure the robots to compete.

"They’ve learned a lot," said Mokapu coach Norman Ellis. "One of the big ‘ahas’ was when (the robot) hit the bottom of the pool and it would sit there because their buoyancy was all messed up."

Navy divers served as underwater judges and retrieved broken robots. They also brought an undersea robot for a demonstration.

The event was sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and the Joint Venture in Education Forum, a partnership between the Department of Defense and state Department of Education. The Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association provided a $1,800 grant.