Manchester Middle School Robotics Team 3rd At Regional Event

MANCHESTER, NJ — Manchester Township Middle School's engineering team took third place in a regional competition with a robot they designed to tackle plastic pollution underwater.

The MATE Pennsylvania Regional Advanced Underwater Robot Competition was held virtually June 5 because it wasn't clear at the time of scheduling whether pandemic restrictions would ease enough to allow in-person competition. The regional event included teams from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.

Manchester's team, the Manchester Shorebots, had to design and build a robot and make a presentation explaining their business plan. They named their robot The Angel of the Coral Reef.

"Our goal is to create an ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) that tackles the ubiquitous problem of plastic pollution, the catastrophic impact of climate change on coral reefs, and to maintain healthy waterways," the team wrote in its business plan. "During our mission, we will have one of our technicians pilot the ROV to demonstrate how it will clear pollution from the waterways."

Team adviser Maura Simister said the competitions are usually held at Villanova University.

Because the competition was held virtually this year, "We went live from a private home swimming pool in Pine Lake Park," Simister said.

"This year was very unique as the students had to also build the challenges and set them up. Then we had to stream both the challenges live as well as the presentation," she said. "The team worked very hard with only about a third of the students we usually have.”

The team consisted of:

• Nathan Hankins Robot, Designer/Vice President
• Ethan Cardoso, Robot Designer
• Sean Ascione, Robot Designer/CEO
• Gabe Calafati, Robot Designer/Design Analysis
• Andrew Van Pelt, Robot Designer/Mechanical Engineer
• Marcos Gaspar. Documentation Team CTO
• Justino DeLeon, Documentation Team CMO
• Joseph Albanese. Demonstration Team CFO
• Bianca DeSpirito, Demonstration Team
• Abigail S. Gonzalez, Demonstration Team
• Emely-Anne Martinez, Demonstration Team

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