Dreadbots Dominate in Jackson, Eye State Championship with New Upgrades

Dexter’s Dreadbots stormed into Jackson, secured a top rank, and are now preparing a powerful robot overhaul for their run at States — and possibly Worlds.

By Peter Hilliard

Photo: Will Weiszhaar, Luke Baur, and Fynn Nielsen working on the robot. Photo by Aodhan O’Neal.

            The Dreadbots have participated in their second robotics district competition at Columbia High School, where they progressed to the semifinals with The Impi Warriors (1025) and The Rat Pack (830).

As in their first competition, the Dreadbots’s consistent reliability and high performance allowed them to end the qualifying matches ranked first of the 40 teams present. Their success was marked by a variety of improvements made after the earlier Milford competition. Currently, the Dreadbots are ranked in the top 3% of Michigan teams, and have solidly qualified for the upcoming States competition. The team is hopeful that their upcoming performance will secure them a spot in the esteemed Worlds competition.

            In addition to adjustments to the robot’s machine vision capabilities, significant improvements are being made to the robot before States. One of the most significant developments is a redesign of the end effector (“grabber/shooter”) of the robot which will allow it to not only pick up coral (the primary scoring piece, a hollow PVC cylinder) with  higher efficiency, but also manipulate algae (an additional game scoring piece like a large playground ball) and score in a goal positioned more than eight feet above the ground. The team is confident that the new end effector will further improve the Dreadbots’ already solid performance for the more challenging States competition.

“One of the biggest changes we’ve had this year is… we’ve had strong financial support from the school…” comments Jennifer Bryson, Lead Mentor for the Dreadbots in an interview at the Jackson competition. Thanks to the school’s support, including a new CNC machine (used to mill custom parts designed by team members), the Dreadbots have leveled up their designing and prototyping abilities, building increasingly capable and reliable subsystems.

An important aspect of the Dreadbots’ robot this year was its machine vision system. “April tags” (similar to QR codes) are placed around the playing field in key locations, and the robot can see and use these tags for scoring alignment via its cameras. This especially assisted with autonomous mode, a 15-second period at the beginning of the match in which the robot operates alone without the students driving it.

“If we didn’t have vision, we would be stuck at a one coral auto.” Explains Sophomore Vision Team Lead Luke Baur. Additionally, the vision team has been working on a vision wiki (a type of online forum) called The Green Alliance which is freely available for other teams to use. The Green Alliance was established in 2022 by Dreadbots alumni Calvin C. Ophoff, Cole Scheller, Josh Fernandez, and Rose Dray. To quote the website: “Our mission is to provide beginner-friendly, easy-to-implement documentation and articles to help you implement handwritten vision into your FIRST team’s robot.” Calvin Portice, Luke Baur, Fynn Nelson, and Arman Buyukbozkirlii made major contributions to the wiki this season, including entries ranging from camera details to linear algebra. You can find the website at “thegreenalliance.dev”.

“[Competitions are] a lot of fun, there’s a lot of dancing… it’s just a very exciting atmosphere… you can get to know people from other teams and build connections throughout the state of Michigan” says Ella Walsh, a 1st year mechanical member on the Dreadbots. Robotics competitions are always a hive of activity with teams constantly cheering for themselves and each other, maintaining their robots, and otherwise socializing. If you’re in K-12, you can join in on the fun! Contact the Dreadbots at dhsdreadbot@gmail.com and consider joining Dexter’s wider team that believes in “Building People by Building Robots!”