Photo Provided Martins Ferry High School senior Hunter Theil, left, and junior Isaac Armstrong celebrate after placing first and third, respectively, in a virtual drone competition by detecting radiation by flying their virtual drones through a simulation.

MARTINS FERRY — Martins Ferry High School students used their computers to guide virtual drones around the world in a simulation to detect radiation and won first and third places in a competition.

The competition, similar to a video game, simulated a group going in to detect where any radiation might be inside of a complex by flying virtual drones around in the world. They measured background radiation to find orange barrels that supposedly had radiation in them and detected and measured the radiation during a timed operation, Robotics teacher Stacey Woods said.

Students used different key combinations on their computers to control the action, Woods added.

The students were able to compete and enter the simulation as many times as they wanted, and would report on a sheet when they finished. The challenge began in October and ran for a week.

Senior Hunter Theil placed first while junior Isaac Armstrong placed third in the drone challenge. During the challenge, college, high school and junior high students from different schools across the nation participated, tasked with virtually piloting the drone in areas that formerly contained nuclear weapons that caused radiation.

“I am very proud of both Hunter and Isaac for their great performances in the Virtual Drone Challenge. In addition to Ohio, the drone competition drew middle school through college age students from several other states, including but not limited to Pennsylvania, Indiana and Michigan,” Superintendent Jim Fogle said. “The challenge introduced them to research that simulated detecting, deterring and defending against weapons of mass destruction. I also want to thank Ms. Woods for mentoring these young men in her STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) class.”

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency of the Department of Defense and the Interaction of Ionizing Radiation with Matter University Research at Penn State University sent an invitation to schools, including Martins Ferry High School, which Woods forwarded to her two robotics classes. A dozen students participated.

The top three submissions were from high school students, beating out university students. Theil and Armstrong placed first and third while second place went to a student from Northern Cambria School in Pennsylvania. Other students who placed in the top seven were from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, Oswayo Valley Jr. High School in Singelhouse, Pennsylvania, Carmichaels Area High School in Carmichaels, Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Woods allowed students to compete during class, but they also competed on their own time. She said she gave students the opportunity and the link and read directions with them, but other than that the students competed on their own.

Woods received an email last week stating that Theil and Armstrong had placed in the top three, and the students were filled with anticipation.

“I was super excited. Hunter had asked me three or four times last week if I had heard anything, and I kept saying, ‘Hunter, I haven’t heard a thing. I don’t really know,'” she said. “But I was really excited when I knew that two of our kids had placed.”

Theil won $300 for his first place win, while Armstrong received $100 for his third place win.

“I felt surprised mostly,” Theil said.

Woods said that sometimes people look at video games as a waste of time, but this challenge was a simulation about how skills through gaming and controlling a drone in a virtual environment could be beneficial in the real world, because it’s a real world scenario, and it’s something that students in the Ohio Valley aren’t always exposed to.

“It’s just nice that the kids could have an opportunity to participate in a competition like this and to compete against students at the university level and at other high schools,” Woods said. “It’s nice to have the opportunity, and it gives Hunter and Isaac and other students who participate something to think about, as far as the future career, which they may not have considered that their gaming skills could be used for in a future career. So it’s just kind of a nice positive reinforcement that there are opportunities out there that we don’t always think about.”