By Nicole Thomas
The Starkville High School RoboJackets added another title to their already impressive list on Saturday. The team earned first and second place honors at the SeaPerch South Regional competition held on the campus of Mississippi State University.
SeaPerch is an innovative underwater robotics program that trains teachers to implement the hands-on aspect of engineering and tool development in order to create a research experience for their students.
SHS defeated the reigning SeaPerch champion to claim their first SeaPerch championship with a dominant performance time of 2 minutes, 30 seconds in the underwater challenge course.
With the win, the five-time state champion RoboJackets are the only high school team in the country to win a BEST Robotics Regional Championship and a SeaPerch Regional Championship.
Despite a mechanical failure and two-minute penalty, a second RoboJackets team resurfaced and finished second in the challenge.
As part of the competition, students were required to build a SeaPerch ROV using basic skills in ship and submarine design to perform multiple independent tasks that tested their ability to operate their SeaPerches with finesse.
The course consisted of three stations in which the vehicles have to maneuver and actuate equipment on the pool floor.
As the South’s top team, the RoboJackets advance to the 2017 National SeaPerch Challenge which will be held in May on the campus of Georgia Tech University in Atlanta where over 100 teams from across the country will compete in a juried poster competition and in-pool technical events with their SeaPerch ROV’s.
SeaPerch South is hosted by Mississippi State University’s Bagley College of Engineering.