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QUEEN CREEK, Ariz. (FOX 10) - For months, a robotics team out of Queen Creek High School has been preparing for a national competition. They've designed a robot to work underwater, and the competition is this weekend.
All summer, a group of Queen Creek high school students known as the "Dog Squad" has been gearing up for a national robotics competition at Arizona State University.
The theme of this year's national underwater competition is the human body. Each group has to design an underwater robot that can not only withstand the water and float to the bottom but can also retrieve objects.
"There are going to be two colored golf balls that are pink and we have to navigate them without disturbing any of the other golf balls in the water and bring them up to the surface to get points," Richardson said.
With the competition this weekend, the Dog Squad has faced a few challenges along the way.
"The hardest challenge is when we get one part fixed, three new [problems] come up," said Devan Richardson," Dog Squad member. "We constantly had to change which wire goes where, how it connects, where it connects and how everything works in unison together."
The group believes their bot "dishwasher" has what it takes to take home the national title.
"When they kind of start to lose it and I have to set up, they start flipping things around," said Josh Popham, Dog Squad coach. "They get that 'aha' moment and that's the gun part to see and [to] actually let them learn by trial and error and grow by themselves."