Are you looking to get extra school credit or add experience to your resume or college application? Do you want to take your technical skills beyond that of a STEM class? Do you like programming, engineering, machining, calculating, writing, speaking, or just love learning? Subsea Rovers is looking for junior high, high school or possibly college students that would like to be part of a team participating in the MATE ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) competition. The MATE competition requires teams to build a submersible ROV that can navigate underwater and complete tasks. To do this, we need a team of motivated students that can not only build the ROV, but operate like a company. We must budget our resources, document our work, and manage and assign tasks to meet the proper deadlines. To learn more about the MATE ROV competition, see their website at https://www.marinetech.org/rov-competition/ . Currently, we are looking for people with motivation and an interest in one of these fields:

Creative/Technical Writing:  Not all of the competition is engineering and programming.  We would like a writer who could post monthly updates about our progress on our blog. We must also submit a technical document along with the ROV, much of which is a creative writing piece describing how we operated together as a team. Technical skills are not required for this position, but some knowledge is recommended. You would be expected to write a 3-6 paragraph blog post every month, and to help with writing the technical documentation.

Programming:  This isn't FLL. We have to write all the code for the land control base and the microcontroller.  We are looking for a programmer familiar with a variant of C that could program the microcontroller. The microcontroller is programmed in C++ and must receive data over an ethernet connection, combine it with data from a gyroscope, and use quaternions and other math to compute thrust values for the ROV's thrusters. Programmers not familiar with C(++/#) that would like to learn it are welcome to join as well.

Mathematics:  If you are mathematician familiar with quaternions and 3D vectors we would love to have you join the team. You would work with the programmers to combine quaternion values and convert user input to individual thruster power levels. Please only sign up for this position if you are familiar with quaternions. If you are not, please start to learn them before signing up.

Electronics:  Someone who has experience with soldering, buffer circuits, power distributions, and other electronics is needed to work on the robot's internals. We have to fit a large amount of electrical components and wiring inside a 4-inch diameter waterproof tube. If you could attempt to design a PCB board for the ROV, that would be extra amazing (not required).

Mechanics:  If you could help design the ROV's frame or a robotic (and waterproof) claw or other tools, don't hesitate to sign up. Many of the tasks require use of lift bags, claws, switches, and other mechanics. We prefer to build these instead of buying them as they can be quite expensive. If you would like to help design and build these, we'd love to have you on the team.

Other interests:  If you have a skill or hobby that wasn't mentioned above but could still be helpful to the team, shoot us an email. We'd love to have anyone who is motivated and excited to learn to help the team in some way. The above skills are not requirements, more guidelines for the type of skills that would benefit the team. If you have a skill you believe would be useful to our team (project management, advertising, graphic design, creative ideas...), don't pass us up just because it wasn't listed above.

Sign Up!

If you have any questions, email us right away at info@subsearovers.com . To sign up, fill out our application form here . We meet weekly in Orangeville on Friday at 8:00am, but it can be changed if necessary. We will also have occasional workdays to get more time with the ROV. The competition is in May, located in Watsonville.