Milton Academy’s remotely operated underwater vehicle team (M.A.R.O.V.) recently earned third place in the fifth annual New England Regional R.O.V. Competition, facing high school teams from New York, New Jersey and around New England. Students traveled to the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Bourne, Massachusetts, for this year’s competition.

As part of the contest, Milton’s team encountered three underwater tasks in roughly 15 feet of water. Twenty-five minutes were allotted for the completion of all three tasks. M.A.R.O.V.’s 4.5 kg-vehicle, Hai, first had to descend with one end of a 30’ messenger line and thread it through a 3.5” U-bolt at depth, bringing the line back to the surface. She then had to dive with a 2-N wet-weight passive acoustic sensor to a designated location at the bottom of the “polar sea.” The final task required Hai to capture “jellyfish” at depth and retrieve them to the surface team at the control deck. All tasks were completed using only the views from Hai’s two underwater cameras along with her manipulator arm/gripper and “stab” component.

Members of this year’s M.A.R.O.V. team are Dan Abrams ’08, Marie Lea Berkowitz ‘08, Yoo-Na Kim ’07, Tim Fram ’07, Alex Desaulniers ’07, Ivan Korzyryev ’07, HoChan Lee ’08, Austin Cheng ’07, Lindsey Dono ’07, Nop Jiarathanakul ’08, Alice Chen ’08, Stephen Suh ’08, Eric Fishman ’10, Sam Thorpe ’08, Dan Reynolds ’09, and mentor Paul Hopkins of Milton’s campus safety department.