Robotics students take the plunge at Colgan High School

PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY — They’re called bots, or ROVs — remotely operated underwater vehicles.

The students here call them the “seaperch.”

And they’re are the ones who designed and built them and then brought them to Colgan High School on Friday to pilot them in an annual competition also called SeaPerch.

Eleven of 12 Prince William County high schools, Manassas, Manassas Park public schools, and Seeton School in Manassas, sent more than 90 teams to compete on Friday.

For the past 10 years, SeaPerch has been the place for students to show off their robotics skills. The motorized bots are put to the test in a series of competitions — everything from speed timed trials to the recovery trails, where a student holding something similar to a Nintendo controller in their hands uses it to send the ROV to the bottom of the pool to retrieve one of a series of plastic toys.

The objective of this recovery challenge is to pick up as many rings from the bottom as possible within two minutes, and then drop them into a bucket sitting at the bottom of the four-foot-deep pool. The best times win, and after they’ve finished, the teams often choose to compete again to best their previous times.

“If you don’t think there is a lot going on here, look again. These students are hard at work,” said Doug Wright, supervisor of Prince William County Public Schools Career and Technical Education (CTE) program.

A sea of volunteers wearing aqua-colored shirts serves as judges for the competition, all standing around the edges of the swimming pool, holding clipboards, timing the students as they maneuver their bot to recover the rings.

Once known as vocational education or TechEd, Prince William County students in recent years have flooded CTE classes that teach career skills on everything from agriculture, cabinet making, to robotics.

Andy Nguyen, an 18-year-old senior from C.D. Hylton High School, was taking auto shop classes when he chose to start working with robots for SeaPerch.

It took him and his team about two weeks to build their bot. He paid close attention to the size, weight, and how to protect the wiring from getting wet and the propeller motor from failing.

“We used an old film canister to make the motors,” said Nguyen.

Winning teams from Friday’s event will go on to compete in a Northern Virginia regional SeaPerch competition in June.