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Students compete in SeaPerch Challenge

via KVEO.com


HARLINGEN, Texas – Local high school students in a robotics competition geared up to put their engineering skills to the test.

“It’s a lot of trial and error, just like anything else,” said Ruben Hernandez, an 11th-grade student at Harlingen High School.

High school students from around the Rio Grande Valley are taking part in the 2020 SeaPerch Challenge.

During the competition, students tested their aquatic droids through obstacle courses.

Ruben Hernandez, an 11th grader at Harlingen High School says building underwater robots means a lot of hard work and dedication.

“We worked on it from last year and we made it better because our team motto is Kaizen, a Japanese rule that always means self-improvement so we’re always trying to self improve and make it better,” said Hernandez.

UTRGV in partnership with the U.S. Navy is hoping this challenge will expand their education.

“They’re getting to learn more about aquatic science trying to learn more about buoyancy, just underwater robotics in general which usually we learn a lot about robotics at the school but not a lot about underwater robotics because sometimes they don’t have the resources to do so,” said Milton Hernandez, UTRGV Marketing and Communications.

Students tell Local 23 that while they are putting their robotic skills to test during this competition, they hope it’ll open doors to careers in engineering and science.

“After this competition, it made me realize it’s something I want to do and keep on doing it more in the future so that’s what I’m trying to do, get better at it,” said Jacqueline Vargas.

The Seaerch competition aims at improving students’ teamwork and problem-solving and get them prepared for their college courses.

First and second place winners will move forward to the national SeaPerch challenge that is taking place at the University of Maryland on May 30th and 31st.

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