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Welcome to the Sea Air and Land Challenge, an Office of Naval Research (ONR) sponsored STEM initiative. Nicknamed the SeAL Challenge, this program introduces high school students to engineering through the design and build of robotic vehicles and payloads. Teams of 3-10 students have twelve to sixteen weeks (one semester) to design unmanned vehicles and payloads to compete in the challenge of their choice. True to the program’s name, the engineering challenges are held underwater, in the air and on the ground. Each team is paired with an industry engineering mentor to guide them through the design and build process. The open sourced robotic systems are then used to compete near the end of the semester on Challenge Day in missions which mimic those encountered by the military and first responders.
The Sea, Air and Land (or SeAL) Challenge objectives are three-fold. The first objective of the program is to provide students with an opportunity to tackle a difficult engineering project while still in high school, and the second objective is to provide students with an awareness of the tremendous technical careers in the Department of Defense and armed forces. The third objective of the program is to help educators and administrators implement a successful Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) program into their schools given time, budget and resource constraints. Educators want to increase STEM education in the local schools, but are often constrained to find time in their busy schedules. The SeAL Challenge can be presented to the students as a club or after-school activity. Several schools have also written this solid and effective program into their curriculum on its own or as part of an engineering, math or physics course. It may also be used with home school curriculum. This program, now in its eighth year, is free to students and school districts. There is no fee for registration or the program material. However, each team is responsible for securing their own funding, a maximum of $500 per team, for their robotic system as part of the challenge. Demonstrating effective budgeting and cost management for their project is considered in scoring each teams’ work. The estimated time to design and build a system is 40 hours – less for larger teams or those who use kits, slightly more for smaller teams or those who start from scratch. Challenge Day will be held at the Marion County Fairgrounds in Marion, OH on Thursday, April 2nd, 2020 in conjunction with the National Robotics Challenge. If you would like more information on this program, please see the attached booklet or contact: Tad Douce, Central Ohio’s Regional Coordinator, at nrc@thenrc.org or Susan Zingaro, Central Coordinator, at seaairland@arl.psu.edu. Please visit the Sea Air and Land Challenge website at: http://seaairland.psu.edu/ To register your school or club: https://seaairland.psu.edu/register/ |
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