THE TRADESMAN

Volume 10 No. 1

-- A NEWSPAPER by and for DIMAN STUDENTS --

March, 2006

Shops Build a Water Wizard

By Paul Rego
Editor-in-Chief

On January 6, Diman's Electronics and Machine Shop teamed up and entered a Underwater Robot Class/Competition (friendly one) at Boston University. Mr. Beaudoin (Electronics Shop), Mr. Avilla (Machine Shop), and Mr. Rapoza (Electronics Shop) were the instructors who helped the students in building the robot.

The competition had seven teams of three people. To win, the robots had to pull up one object from the bottom of the pool at Boston University. They had five minutes to complete this task. To make things worse for the teams, the Cape Cod swim team was also in the pool at the other end making the water choppy and thus making it harder for the robots to get their items. The team came in 3rd place but it was the only one of the robots that were able to pull up all of the objects that were set up. Of the seven teams, three failed to work.

To make the robots, the teams had some parts set up for them to use. Some of the parts were PBC pipe, tie raps, foam insulation, motors, wires, switches, strings, and bottles. The average sizes of the robots were around 10" by 12". Our Robots measurements were 16"-10.37"-13.5". The teams could test out their robots in a bucket that was given out. Our robot barely fit inside of the bucket.

Mr. Beaudoin plans to start up an after school project to make working robots. All students from all shops are welcome to join. He also plans to get two teams up and running to go to B.U. for the next competition. Another plan is to make a robot to be dropped into the Taunton River and have it work since the robots now are freshwater robots.