A University of Texas at Dallas student team won a third-place award at an international competition for building a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that can collect data on temperature, pressure and chemicals in the ocean.

The students demonstrated their vehicle, named VESPA, in an Olympic-sized pool in Kingsport, Tennessee, in June at the annual MATE ROV Competition, a program of the Marine Technology Society. The 2024 international collegiate competition focused on ocean-based solutions to climate change.

The students also demonstrated how VESPA, which took more than a year to build, could be used to deliver probiotics to underwater locations to help restore and maintain healthy marine ecosystems.

The students won third place in the contest’s Pioneer class, which is for first-time teams. The team also won an award for best technical documentation.

Computer science senior Farhan Jamil said he started the underwater robotics student organization RoboSub in 2022 soon after he enrolled in UTD. A group of students from the organization formed the Hydromeda team that enrolled in the MATE ROV Competition.

The team received support from the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science Student Council and Veolia, an international environmental and water management firm for which Jamil works as a talent coordinator. Dr. Yonas Tadesse, associate professor of mechanical engineering, is the team’s faculty advisor.

“We are super happy and excited to have brought home not one but two awards as a first-time competing team,” Jamil said. “We hope to continue to innovate and create amazing aquatic robots in the future and provide an opportunity for students to learn real-world skills in an interdisciplinary environment.”

Team members said they enjoyed meeting students from around the world at the competition.

“It was amazing seeing all the different teams work in harmony to address issues efficiently,” said Mohammad Khan, a mathematics senior.

Mechanical engineering senior Ken Shibatani called the event a “fantastic experience.”

“We learned many things from how other teams approached the competition,” Shibatani said.

RoboSub plans to compete again in 2025, when it will advance from Pioneer to the highest level of competition, Explorer.

“As pilot, I was able to learn a lot from other teams by connecting with their members and seeing their ROVs,” computer science junior Colin Wong said. “I’ll admit, the product demonstrations were stressful, but it’s only given me more ideas on how to improve our ROV for next year.”

A version of this article appeared in News Center.