Six N.C. students win international robot contest

KILL DEVIL HILLS, N.C.

A little underwater robot named Romvy, similar to the large machine working at the Gulf oil spill, took first place at an international competition for the First Flight High School students who built it.

Made with a plastic frame and chock-full of electronics, the remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, can motor around under the surface, take samples and pick up stuff with its mechanical hand. It records its activities with four attached cameras.

The Marine Advanced Technology Education Center in Monterey, Calif., organizes an annual ROV competition for high school and college students. This year's event was held in Hawaii on June 26. There were 34 high school teams and 27 colleges in that division.

Sponsorships and donated parts worth about $14,000 helped finance the trip for the First Flight team and construction of the robot.

It wasn't their first time competing at that level. First Flight won the regional competition for mid-Atlantic states the past two years and placed sixth in the international event both years.

After two years of missing the top prize, the team, guided by adviser Andrew Thomas, started all over with a new machine.

For three months, beginning in February, they attended school, participated in sports, did their homework, and then spent the rest of the evening and sometimes into the early morning hours working on the robot.

The team consisted of six students: Barry Lawler, 18, pilot; David Spruill, 17, computer specialist; Sean O'Neal, 18, launch and recovery; Chris Brennan, 16, navigator; Patrick Gray, 18, navigator; and Charles Brady, 17, launch, recovery and safety officer.

Most of it was done in Thomas' garage in Nags Head. The longest day didn't end until 3 a.m. when some team members fell asleep in Thomas' front yard.

"We were locked up in that garage for three months," Gray joked. "They'd toss us a pizza once in a while."

During those hours in the garage, the team applied skills in electronics, wiring, mechanical engineering and underwater physics.

"Most of us didn't have any knowledge of wiring," Lawler said. "Now we do."

They practiced with the robot over and over again in the pools of friends and family and repeatedly rehearsed their oral report.

"It was easy because we knew it so well," Gray said.

As pilot, Lawler operates two joy sticks, one for the robot and one for the mechanical hand. He can see all four camera angles at once on a computer screen in front of him.

At his prompting, Romvy goes down, up, forward and side-to-side. He would steer it through hula hoops in the practice pool.

The arm reaches out, and the two-pronged hand opens and closes. It s motors are bilge pumps, and it s propellers came from remote-controlled boats.

Long cords for wiring and video buoyed by small floats reach from the command center, a small table at poolside.

Every year, the contest has a theme. This year the theme was about Loihi, Hawaii's undersea volcano that rises more than 9,840 feet above the sea floor.

In the controlled environment of a pool, the student's robot had to deploy instruments, take temperature readings, plot data and take samples of mock organisms as if it were swimming around the peak of the volcano.

Team members plan to pursue careers in science and hope this experience helps them get into prestigious schools and snare significant scholarships.

A former team member, Zach Miller, got a $10,000 scholarship from the Marine Technology Society, said Thomas, who teaches physics and oceanography at First Flight. Miller attends the Florida Institute of Technology now, studying ocean engineering.

Oil companies are the biggest customer for the large ROVs, such as those being used in the Gulf of Mexico, Thomas said.

Next year, the theme of the competition, to be held in Houston, could be focused on a broken, gushing oil pipe.

Professionals at the Hawaii competition repeatedly reminded the teams of how what they are doing has practical application at the oil spill, Thomas said. The First Flight ROV is basically the same machine, except much smaller and much less expensive.

"The principles are the same," he said.

Since the team's victory, people have asked them about solving the BP oil spill. They have a quick response, Brady said.

"Give us $2 million and we will."

Jeff Hampton, (252) 338-0159, jeff.hampton@pilotonline.com