Clarenville high schoolers take robotics skills to university competition

Clarenville High School has boasted a robotics team for the last number of years.Usually, the students compete at the high school level. In fact, last year they took home an international award for their work.

But this year, the students decided to take things into a higher gear,and are competing in the university-level Explorer class at the 2015 MATE international ROV competition in St. John's.

Courtney and Kyle Clarke, two Grade 12 students from Clarenville High School, are twins and members ofthe Clarenvillerobotics team. Together they've spent hours working on their underwater remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, for the upcoming competition.

"It takes a lot of dedication and a lot of work. It's a lot of pressure over time," said Courtney Clarke.

"When you start off, it's kind of like a fun thing to do coming after school, but it takes a lot more than that when you get into it."

The robotics team needs to be able to complete a number of tasks underwater in an allotted amount of time. The ROV will need to be able to perform them in three different water conditions, such as ice, as well as awave tank.

The Clarenville High School team is nervous, especially since they're competing against university teams.

"There's gonna be big universities out there. Specifically, engineering universities that do this kind of stuff for fun," said Kyle Clarke.

"I think we can do pretty well for our first time," saidCourtney Clarke."Now, it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out, but it's going tobe good."

The Clarenville High School robotics team has just over a month until they compete. The students still have to fine-tune their machine and come up with a name.

"I think we're starting to sway towards naming it after our mentor, Mr. Spurrell," said Kyle Clarke.

The competitions runJune 25 to 27 in St. John's.