A top showing at a competition at the Northern Gulf Coast Regional ROV Competition in Dauphin Island last weekend enabled a local ROV team to advance to an international competition later this year.

Limestone County Career Technical Center’s Lost Rockets placed first in the Ranger class for the second year in a row. Neighboring Sparkman High School in Harvest placed second in the same category. In the Navigator class competition, Fairview High School’s Aggies Inc. from Cullman placed first.

The first-place victory effectively punched the Lost Rockets’ ticket to the MATE International Competition in Long Beach, California, in June.

About the competition

Twenty-three teams from five states competed at the Dauphin Island competition, which ran Friday through Sunday. Teams competed with their custom-built remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) in three different class levels of increasing complexity. The competition was part of the Marine Advanced Technology Education’s network of 30 regional competitions held across the U.S. and around the world.

Teams completed missions relating to this year’s theme of Port Cities of the Future. Students designed and tested their ROV to accomplish various underwater tasks similar to real-world tasks an ROV would perform in a seaport. Missions included assisting with a hyperloop system to streamline commerce delivery, conduct maintenance on an entertainment water and light show, and locate and identify lost cargo containers.

In addition to the ROV missions, students prepared an engineering presentation to deliver to a panel of judges and their peers as well as design a poster about their ROV “company.”