Misleading: They actually placed 3rd behind MIT in the actual challenge

From the article:

"This was the engineering review?professionals in underwater engineering evaluated all the ROVs, scored each team?s technical documentation, and grilled students about their designs. The results counted for more than half of the total possible points in the contest."

?How?d you make the laser range finder work?? Swean growled. MIT had admitted earlier that a laser would have been the most accurate way to measure distance underwater, but they?d concluded that it would have been difficult to implement.

?We used a helium neon laser, captured its phase shift with a photo sensor, and manually corrected by 30 percent to account for the index of refraction,? Cristian answered rapidly, keyed up on adrenaline. Cameron had peppered them with questions on the drive to Santa Barbara, and Cristian was ready.

Swean raised a bushy, graying eyebrow. He asked about motor speed, and Lorenzo sketched out their combination of controllers and spike relays. Oscar answered the question about signal interference in the tether by describing how they?d experimented with a 15-meter cable before jumping up to one that was 33 meters."

The reason the engineering interview and review of the tech manual are valued so high is because the interview confirms that the competitors understand and can communicate the engineering concepts used to build/design their product. On top of that, the technical manual is KEY to engineering projects because ...

Even if you build the best robot, if another engineer can't pick up the manual, read it, and operate it ... it's a useless piece of crap. Any engineer worth his nuts will tell you that the most important thing when buying a new piece of equipment is the MANUAL--because without it, you're just GUESSING on how to use it.

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Matthew 5:5 - Blessed are the geeks, for they shall inherit Middlearth.

The competition is composed of multiple events. That's the structure, regardless of your opinion or conspiracy theory.

These guys showed they could build a functioning device that performed as well or better than other teams with a build budget 5% of what others had. The build budget and simplicity are often overlooked but are a significant part of the evaluation/objectives. Their documentation and understanding of the components were also given top marks.

The documentary Underwater Dreams gives a pretty good representation of the actual events.

---Listen, ..do you smell something?---

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professionals in underwater engineering evaluated all the ROVs, scored each team's technical documentation, and grilled students about their designs. The results counted for more than half of the total possible points in the contest.

Thete is a documentary, "underwater dreams", that dass the following.
There were 30 judges.
The MIT team was also interviewed in the documentary and they said they botched the technical report, because it was done as an afterthought. They knew they had the superior robot, but they failed to " sell" it to the judges. It's something that mirrors real life. No matter how superior your product is. If you fail to make the consumer und er stand why it is besteht for him, you will fail.

Don't be so butt hurt. Just because the MIT team got better jobs in the end doesn't mean they should have won the competition. There's so many other circumstances. Also, if what they said in the movie is true and the Carl Hayden Team all were illegal immigrants, then naturally they are at a socioeconomical disadvantage to begin with and are less likely to be able to get jobs at large legitimate companies.

Yes, it does seem like a pity vote, which is not good. Shame on the committee