A team of homeschoolers from the Lehigh Valley will be traveling to Alpena, Mich., in late June to compete against top teams from around the world in the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center's 13th Annual International Student ROV Competition. The local team placed first at a regional competition, the MATE Pennsylvania ROV Challenge at Rowan University May 10.

ROVs, or remotely operated vehicles, are underwater vessels that can be used for a variety of tasks. This year's competition theme is "Exploring the Great Lakes: Shipwrecks, Sinkholes, and Conservation."

The team, known as pROVe (Pennsylvania ROV Engineers), designed and built an ROV capable of exploring and documenting shipwrecks, studying sinkholes and preserving national maritime heritage sites.

In addition to using their ROV to complete a series of missions involving a simulated shipwreck site, the team was required to compile a 20-page technical report, create a poster display, make a presentation to a panel of judges, and design a team t-shirt.

At the competition, the team took first place in mission scores,third place in the tech report, third place in the poster display, and the special SME Design Elegance Award for design aesthetics, simplicity, and functionality.

This is the third year the pROVE team has competed in the competition, and this will be their third time traveling to internationals. Team members include David Sampsell, Natalie Sampsell, Hannah Smith, Stephen Gahman, Timothy Gahman and Ben Green.