Tekscan’s FlexiForce™ division announces its partnership with the 2011 Marine Advanced Technology Education Center (MATE) international student underwater robotics competition. The MATE competition, which will be hosted by the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas from June 16^th-18^th, holds over 20 regional competitions taking place across the US, Canada, Hong Kong, Scotland, and Japan.

This year, students must build ROVs to complete tasks including; observation, survey, inspection, construction, intervention, and burial and trenching. The 2011 competition will also focus on the challenges ROVs faced during the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and will highlight how more effective technology could prevent such a disaster from occurring in the future.

The MATE competition not only seeks to improve students’ technical skills but to help develop their problem solving capabilities, as well as promote team work and critical thinking. The partnership enables students to easily obtain and use FlexiForce standard sensors and products in their designs for the duration of the competition, which ends June 18^th, 2011. For more information on the MATE Center and this year's competition, including a complete list of competition dates, rules, and information on how you can enter, please visit their website at http://www.materover.org/main/.