Boulder High underwater robotics team heads to world competition

Boulder High graduate Ian Graves, left, and incoming senior Kieran Abbott talk about their team’s underwater robot on Friday at a teammate’s workshop in Boulder. The Boulder High Robosharks are competing this week at the MATE ROV Competition 2024 World Championship in Kingsport, Tenn. (Amy Bounds/Staff Writer)

Boulder High’s underwater robot malfunctioned right before the regional competition in May, forcing the team to scramble to come up with solutions.

While they weren’t able to get the complicated robot fully functional after a part failed and programming issues cropped up, other teams also struggled. Their meticulous documentation of the engineering behind their robot was enough to earn them first place in their category. They’re now competing at this week’s worlds competition, and once again scrambling to fix some lingering challenges.

“We’ve done what we needed to do,” said Kieran Abbott, an incoming senior and one of the team captains. “We made it to worlds. If we can get the robot working, great. But just being in the atmosphere of worlds is what I’m really looking forward to.”

The MATE ROV Competition’s 2024 World Championship starts Thursday in Kingsport, Tenn. This year’s theme focuses on creating solutions to issues with marine data collection, as well as repairing damage to vulnerable ecosystems like coral reefs. The competition can be watched live at twitch.tv/mateinspires1.

The Boulder High team is fundraising to help cover the cost of attending the national competition and replace obsolete equipment at givebutter.com/SPjWfV. The team is primarily supported financially by the Jim and Dede Barttlet Foundation, which has promised to match donations.

A Boulder High team competed at the world competition once before, in 2021.

The school’s robotics club switched to underwater robotics from more traditional competitions during the pandemic because it offered an opportunity to compete in person. Students liked the underwater program so much, they stuck with it — despite challenges that include no district swimming pool for easy practice. Other challenges included keeping out leaks so all the electronics stay dry.

“Underwater robotics poses more unique challenges,” Abbott said. “Creating something waterproof is a lot more interesting and involved than what you do for a regular robotics competition.”

To test the robot, they’ve borrowed friends’ pools and rented lanes at area recreation centers. So they could keep working on the robot once school let out for the summer, teammate Jack Wysong’s family offered the use of their ceramics workshop in north Boulder.

As they worked on last minute adjustments in the workshop using tools they brought over from Boulder High, the students talked about finding community and a passion through the club. They said alumni from the club still come back to check in and tell stories of past competitions, including past failures that are part of a “shrine of what not to do.”

“You’re immersed in this environment of cool stuff, ” said Ian Graves, who graduated in May and is a team captain. “It’s awesome.”

While 14 students in total have worked on this year’s winning robot, 10 are going to worlds, along with four adult mentors.

“This experience of working with a team to achieve a common goal is unparalleled,” said Zhenren Miller Meng, a team captain who graduated in May. “I’m really excited to engage at worlds.”

Mackenzie Olsen, another team captain who graduated in May, estimated he spent more than 80 hours last week troubleshooting, including remaking the ethernet cable the robot needs to communicate. The team took the problematic cable to Blue Trail Engineering in Longmont, a company that’s helped the team this year.

“We had a team of five engineers trying to figure it out,” he said. “It can be challenging.”

But, he added, he likes the practical nature of the challenge, which focuses on the growing underwater remotely operated vehicle industry. The competition mimics real world tasks, he said, and requires teams to “behave like a real company.”

While the team may use some of the ideas, as well as the more expensive parts, from previous years’ robots, they like to make something new each year.

“We wanted to do a very different design this year,” Graves said.

They said they also try to learn from the previous year’s efforts. This year, for example, they built a larger dry box after last year’s team struggled to access the wires housed in a too-small box.

Along with preparing for competition, building up the club and preparing younger students to serve as captain has been a focus. In 2022, the club was down to five members. This year, there are about 30 members.

Karissa Murra, an incoming senior, joined the team last school year after hearing about it from a teacher.

“I got interested in it,” she said. “It’s really cool to see all the different things a robot can do underwater. It’s been really useful for life, learning all the technology.”