On April 24 and 25, 2015, Drexel University’s Daskalakis Athletic Center pool will once again be home to more than 1000 middle and high school students competing against each other in a robotics challenge. The underwater robotics competition, known as the
Greater Philadelphia SeaPerch Challenge, is an annual regional qualifying competition that sends its winners on to the National SeaPerch Competition which will take place at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth in May.
This year, Drexel is expecting approximately 80 teams of students from grades 5-12. This year nearly one third of the teams are new to the SeaPerch competition. “The goal of the SeaPerch competition is to expose youth to the exciting field of engineering and science and hopefully inspire these young people to consider academic pursuits and careers in the science, technology engineering and mathematics fields” said Alistar Erickson-Ludwig, STEM Program Coordinator for the College of Engineering. “SeaPerch goes beyond introducing students to engineering; it builds practice in teamwork, leadership, writing and presentation skills.” Competitors will be judged in multiple categories. The first category, vehicle performance, is a test of how well the students did in designing and building their Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV). This category includes an obstacle course and a challenge mission. The second category, team poster and presentation, is a test of how well the students convey their engineering ideas and market their ROV. The third category, team spirit and sportsmanship, focuses on teamwork and students’ energy The last category, engineering design notebook, requires teams to explain how they designed their ROVs and how they used the engineering process.
Drexel University is excited to host the 10th annual Greater Philadelphia SeaPerch Challenge, which will feature special events for this anniversary competition. This year’s vehicle performance challenge, ‘Top Secret Recovery Mission’, is based on a fictional scenario where teams must locate and recover a satellite data recorder from an enemy drone.
Sea Perch is part of the Office of Naval Research’s “Recruiting the Next Generation of Naval Architects” initiative. The initiative focuses on bringing academia, government and industry to work together to ensure that the talent needed to design the Navy’s next generation of ships and submarines will be there when needed. Drexel University has hosted all Greater Philadelphia regional SeaPerch competitions since its inception in 2005.