Promotion of marine technology at BCIT

The Department of Mechanical Engineering at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) has, since 2006, been involved in a number of projects to promote marine technology and engineering in British Columbia. Specifically, BCIT has encouraged high school students to become interested in marine technology through the BCIT Underwater Discovery Challenge (UDC), BCIT Diploma students through our support of a MATE ROV team, and BCIT B.Eng. degree students through specific underwater related projects. This paper will provide an overview of our initiatives and discuss some of the challenges we face. The high-school level of the project, the BCIT UDC, has now been running for four years and has brought over 200 high school students and their teachers from around British Columbia to a two-day workshop to build and test an underwater ROV. This year 50 high school students attended the fourth annual BCIT UDC and had a great time designing, building, and testing their ROVs. During the first of day of the challenge, the students are taken through the design process, told the specific tasks they will have their ROV's perform, and then work towards a design for their ROV at BCIT's Burnaby Campus. They then go into the BCIT shop facilities and build their ROV and a simple control system. By the end of the day, they have a (nearly) functional ROV consisting of a control system, thrusters and framing. The students then take their ROVs back to their school and work on improving the ROV and adding specific task tooling that will allow them to complete the specified tasks. When the students arrive at the BCIT Marine Campus for the second day of the challenge, they have some practice time in the pool before the afternoon challenge. During the afternoon, the students guide their ROVs to perform the challenge tasks in the campus' pool facility, followed by an engineering evaluation of their designs by a group of judges. Over the last few years we have encouraged our students to take their ROVs to the MATE Pacific Northwest ROV competition and, in 2007, one of the UDC ROVs placed third in the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, the new passport and border requirements have made it nearly impossible for high school teachers to take their students across the border and we have seen a significant decline in BC teams competing at the MATE PNW regional competition. BCITs Diploma of Mechanical Engineering Technology students have been involved in the MATE ROV competition since the 2007 event in St. John's, NL and since then have competed with four different ROVs. The 2010 ROV competed in the MATE International ROV Competition in Hawaii in June and came in fifth place out of approximately 25 teams. One of the successes having this project at BCIT has been the requirement of creating an ROV from scratch for each competition. This has allowed some very different and interesting designs to come forward and has increased the learning of each of the student teams involved. Although re-using previous years' work would likely increase our chance of success at the international competition, student learning and enthusiasm has been built up more by requiring them to re-design for each subsequent year. Another criterion placed on the teams is the requirement for their ROV to be transportable in a standard suitcase. This has reduced the number of headaches when travelling internationally by air. This year, for the BCIT ROV team, six Mechanical Engineering Technology students and two Mechatronics and Robotics students are involved. The six Mechanical Engineering Technology students were broken into two groups one to work on the framing, propulsion and interconnectivity and one to work on task tooling. The Mechatronics and Robotics students were primarily focused on the control system for the ROV. This approach has worked well and the interdisciplinary nature of the project adds to all the students' learning. Although the students had some challenges at the international competition, they ended up in fifth place overall, and had the second best poster display. Finally, the Department has promoted the involvement of students in the Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering (B.Eng.). During this program the students have a nine month engineering design project course as part of the last year of their studies. This year, one student has been working on the design of a thruster that will meet the MATE specifications and provide as much thrust as possible. The student gained excellent experience on shaft sealing, connections, bearings, etc. The Department is also considering involving B.Eng. students in the AUVSI Autonomous Underwater Vehicle competition in the future. Overall, the involvement of BCIT faculty and students, as well as high school students, has exposed a large number of people to marine technology and, at the same time, created an interest in BCIT technology and engineering programs. We have had at least three former BCIT UDC participants graduate with a DiplT in Mechanical Engineering Technology and we expect that, over the next few years, at least two of these students will continue on to earn a B.Eng. (Mechanical) degree at BCIT.