MOUNT GREENWOOD — The robotics club at Brother Rice High School took home the top prize at a regional competition Saturday and advanced to an international contest at the Johnson Space Center.
The team of 20 students built an underwater robot called the Edmund MK 2.5. Painted in the school colors, it competed against 11 similar robots in the local tournament coordinated by the Shedd Aquarium.
The team took the top overall prize in the Midwest Regional Marine Advanced Technology Education ROV Competition. The group now moves on to compete against 30 similar robots built throughout the country as well as Canada, Russia, China, Scotland, Turkey, Egypt and Bermuda.
This contest is June 23-25 in the Houston-based space center's neutral buoyancy lab, which is used by astronauts to perfect their space walks.
The robot built at the school at 10001 S. Pulaski Road in Mount Greenwood is known by team members as a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV. Its official name is a nod to Brother Edmund Rice, the founder of the Congregation of Christian Brothers, which founded the school.
The most recent competition required the robot to perform a variety of tasks in the deep end of the pool at Northeastern Illinois University in North Park. Two Brother Rice students operated the robot without being able to look into the pool.
Underwater cameras, a remote claw and propellers were used by students manning the controls. They had to pick up certain objects, move them around the pool and even take a temperature reading from an underwater jet.
Daniel Mostyn, a West Beverly resident, started the robotics club at Brother Rice last year. He said the school's latest robot was meant to mimic a similar device NASA intends to send to a moon of Jupiter to explore what is believed to be a hidden sea buried beneath a layer of ice.
"All of these tasks are supposed to mirror real-life ROV tasks," he said.
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