on 16-06-2007 16:35

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Students' invention heading to global competition in June

Cape Henlopen High School students (from left) Daniel Ware, Roy Collins, Sean Mock, Mike Willey and Nick Faircloth (hidden) discuss their robot with coach William Geppert. Not shown are Sami Bateman, A.J. Verdarame and Garrett Williams.
The News Journal/SCOTT NATHAN

Team members (from left) Mike Willey, Nick Faircloth, Sean Mock and Daniel Ware work on improving their robot, currently in pieces, before the international competition next month. The News Journal/SCOTT NATHAN

What happens when you take PVC pipe, security cameras, a bicycle chain, bilge pumps and bits and pieces of this and that and put them all together with solder, glue and duct tape?

A team of students from Cape Henlopen High School did just that, throwing in their math, physics and engineering know-how to build an underwater robot that was effective enough to win the second annual Mid-Atlantic Regional Underwater Robotics Competition last month.

They went up against some of "the top schools in the county," said John Yore, Cape Henlopen High School principal. "This was a big accomplishment for Cape students and it's very nice for Delaware."

Now the team is preparing for the Marine Advanced Technology Education Center International competition to be held in June in Canada.

To the outsider, things didn't look so good on Friday. The award-winning robot was in bits and pieces as team members tinkered with their design and put the power of math and science to the test.

Someone shouts out: "Do you know the mass of this?"

It is a cage of black, plastic-coated PVC pipe -- the bones of the robot.

"The mass of this: 10," shoots back Roy Collins, a senior from Millsboro.

Out come scales and tools. Daniel Ware, a senior from Milton, files away at a piece of metal.

Practical science

For team sponsor and teacher Bill Geppert, it's great "just to hear them talking about science. ... They don't get a grade for it. This is purely a voluntary thing."

And they have engineering, design, writing and speaking skills to refine before the big contest.

This team -- Collins, Sami Bateman, A.J. Verdarame, Mike Willey, Garrett Williams, Sean Mock, Ware and Nick Faircloth, the only junior -- are bright students, Geppert said. But they are also well-rounded and great at thinking on their feet.

They realize they accomplished something major by winning the regionals. Last year, they came in dead last and came home with a special prize -- a roll of duct tape.

So when they went back to competition this year, they had something to prove.

They finished first in the Engineering Evaluation and had the fastest water mission, placing them first overall in the contest.

With the robot in pieces, they are testing and refining their winning design.

"It's not supposed to be pretty," Collins joked. "It's supposed to instill fear" in the competition.

Underwater teamwork

The contest requires students to develop a robot that can perform tasks underwater.

Team members can't talk to each other while running the robot. Instead, they watch the robot's movements by camera -- in the case of the Cape Henlopen team, home security cameras. The home cameras are ideal, as team members explain, because you can see in low light conditions.

During competition, the team members take on specialized tasks. Willey, for instance, operates the robot's mechanical "claw."

Faircloth keeps the tether from kinking or tangling.

"There are a lot of little nuances," Williams said. "It's difficult not to get everything tangled up."

The tasks facing the robot and the team include reattaching a piece of chain to an anchor -- a typical underwater maintenance job -- and collecting samples -- with ping-pong balls and similar objects substituting for algae and jellyfish.

In Canada, the tasks will be done beneath a layer of ice. Those ping pong balls, by the way, will float just beneath that ice layer.

"That's the hardest part for me," Willey said.

As a final task in the scientific section, the team will deploy an acoustic sonar -- a weighed piece of PVC pipe.

In the last test, they will work on a simulated off-shore oil rig -- replacing parts and making repairs.

As team members work on perfecting their robot, they also are trying to raise money to cover the cost of materials -- about $1,000 so far -- and the cost of the trip. By the time the competition is over, Geppert estimates they will spend about $10,000 for travel and materials.

Meanwhile, team members are busy weighing, measuring, doing tank tests and engineering calculations.

The team members are great at finding new uses for common things like the bilge pumps and security cameras, Geppert said.

And they are good at thinking on the fly.

"It hasn't really hit me yet that we're in the international competition," Faircloth said.

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Last update: 16-06-2007 16:35

Published in : Bot News, Educational

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