For more than a decade, the Institute of Competition Sciences has been working with competition organizations to capture, organize, and recognize student achievement. One great example is the MATE Underwater ROV Competition!
MATE has decades of history that can tell us much more than just who won a championship. ICS has been working with MATE to analyze 10 years of historic competition data, helping showcase the value of robotics competition and explore what the data can tell us about the schools, teams, and skills involved.
Photo Courtesy of MATE ROV
By analyzing which schools consistently make it to the World Championship and which reach the podium, we learn more about how different skills rise to the top in underwater robotics. We can start to see the organizations that built a tradition of excellence, and the competition dynasties that emerged over time.
We explored some of that history in our previous look at the “Underwater Robotics Dynasties,” using our Power Points system to measure and compare long-term competition performance.
What if that history could become more than an article? What if students could actually see, track, and celebrate their competition journey? That’s one of the ideas behind the new ICS platform, badges, and leaderboards we’re officially launching in late September, 2026!
We’ve been working behind the scenes for the last few months to create a more user-friendly and dynamic way to experience academic competitions. Our platform goes beyond simply registering for a competition and finding out who won.
The new platform gives students innovative ways to track their competition experiences, earn digital badges and achievements, follow leaderboards and rankings, and celebrate their accomplishments.
With 10 years of MATE ROV competition data, we’ve already seen incredible competition trends, revealing long-term dynasties, underdogs, and rising stars in underwater robotics.
The brand new ICS platform will bring that information closer to the students, teams, and schools themselves, making it easier to track competition experiences, recognize achievements, follow rankings, and celebrate progress over time.
As data from more competitions (not just ICS competitions!) is linked into the platform, students will be able to build a living record of their experiences across the academic competition community.
One of the first badges we’ll be piloting on the new ICS platform is Robotics. Students participating in competitions like MATE ROV and other robotics competitions will be able to earn points toward their robotics badge and have a new way to recognize and celebrate the skills they develop through competition.
Interested in taking your love for robotics a step further? Do you want another opportunity to earn points towards your badges? The 2027 MATE ROV Competition World Championship takes place in June, 2027 but registration for regional competitions launches this fall. Learn more as details are released at https://materovcompetition.org/world-championship/.
The new ICS platform is being designed to support more than ICS competitions. We’re building a platform for the broader world of academic competition, with new ways to recognize achievement, follow competition, and celebrate the people who make these experiences possible.
We’ve spent years collecting and learning from competition data. Now, we’re getting ready to put that information to work in a whole new way, and we are so excited to do it!
The scoreboard is on. The rankings are moving. The competition is heating up. On September 23, we’ll show you what’s next!
If you have any questions or comments about the new ICS Platform or want to be involved in refinement as we continue to develop it, please contact info@competitionsciences.org.