City Underwater Robotics in 2022 MATE World
The team participated in the 2022 Maring Advanced Technology Education (MATE) ROV World Championship in Long Beach City College, California, U.S.A., from 23 to 25 June. It is the largest ROV challenge worldwide for Highschool and University students up to date.
MATE’s mission is to inspire and challenge students to learn and creatively apply science, technology, engineering, and math to solve real-world problems that strengthen critical thinking, collaboration, entrepreneurship, and innovation. The United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and inspiring our global community to embrace environmental, social, and governance (ESG) efforts to create a sustainable future on our ocean planet.
After two years of the outbreak of COVID-19, the United States set Hong Kong as a travel COVID-19 restriction area. In addition, the 5th Wave of COVID-19 situation in Hong Kong is getting worse during our preparation period; All CityU Underwater Robotics members are still working days and nights to build up our new ROV. Despite all the difficulties present to us in these difficult times, the team managed to place 9th out of the 20 teams that participated in the Explorer class of this year’s World Championship.
It has been a very rewarding and refreshing experience to revisit the MATE World Championship in the United States again after 2 years of absence due to the pandemic. We hope to see all the teams in the US again and achieve higher next year with a new robot with improvements to our design!