Aquabots reflection

My name is Harrison and I am part of the NZ Aquabot team that competed in the 2017 National Seaperch Challenge. We managed to come 30th out of the 75 teams so I am very proud of the team.

It was an amazing experience going to the USA and competing. There was so many teams there from all around the United States of America. The Event was held at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. The pool there was an amazing facility as it was used for the 1996 summer olympic games.

It was very interesting to look at all the other teams robots. There was lots of ideas that we never even thought about. One of the things that we struggled with was the buoyancy of the robot. We had to be able to get down to the bottom easily but still be able to lift the cube. What we saw on the other robots was that some of the teams reduced the size of the whole robot so that the had less weight therefore able to lift the cube easily. We did think about doing this but never went further with the idea. I got to talk to one of the other teams about how and why they did this which encouraged me to think about how we could have been more adventurous and that we need to investigate other ideas further however impossible they may seem.

Our first event was the obstacle course. For this task Padraig was the tether operator and I was the driver. On our first run we had a good run with a time of 3 minutes and 9 seconds. That ended up being our fastest time as on our second run we got unlucky and had lots of ripples from divers on both sides of us. We did get another go at the obstacle course but had a propeller fall off so we kept our original time. The next event was the puzzle task where you have to pick up cubes and rings and put them on poles. For this task Darroch was the driver and Padraig was the tether operator. We got maximum points for the rings but didn’t get any cubes on because one of our floats came of and we couldn’t lift the cubes at all. Even though we didn’t get any cubes on we still did well to get all the rings on. The points from both tasks were added to our engineering notebook score and we got 30th out of the 75 teams in our division. Many of the teams placed above us had already been to this event before so we did very well considering that it was our first time at the Nationals.

Overall I feel very privileged to have attended this event. It has inspired me to think more about the design process and how it impacts the final product. The large number of teams meant that I saw how all the other teams came up with solutions for the many problems that lots of the teams faced. By being a part of this event it has made me realize that there is so much more to science and technology than what I thought. It has opened me up to different subjects that I could possibly take going into my first year at high school which could develop further into possible careers with science and technology. One of the things that they talked about at the opening ceremony was that there is a shortage of engineers and that with the advancement of technology there will be more engineers needed which through this project has opened another possible pathway.

By being a part of this project I have learnt a lot about myself. I learnt that I like the physical design and construction process and not so much the electrical design. I learnt that I am good at thinking quickly under pressure. I also learnt a lot about teamwork and that it’s not always easy to agree on one idea. I had had a lot of fun and I definitely learnt heaps. Overall it was just an amazing experience.