The Dreadbots Make Waves at Milford

Maximus Rogers and Peter Hilliard

Dexter High School’s Robotics team 3656 (The Dreadbots) claimed first place with alliance partners 67 (HOT) and team 6344 (The Jiggawatts) at the Milford Robotics Competition hosted by FIRST. The Dreadbots’ robot, (lovingly named Kuzco by the team) competed in a water-themed escapade called Reefscape. The Dreadbots’ consistent performance qualified them in first place out of 39 teams in the Milford event and they ended week one of the competition ranked third out of the 529 teams registered in Michigan.

This year’s game involved six robots per match maneuvering large rubber balls (representing algae) and 6” diameter PVC pipes (representing coral) around a playing field. At the end of the game, the robots attempt to lift themselves off the ground. Building the robot this year was a real challenge, but the Dreadbots had a plan.

As soon as the 2025 game was released on January 4th, the strategy team analyzed the rules and determined the bare minimum the robot would need to do to be competitive this season, along with some stretch goals. Prototyping then began.

“We started with wood prototypes and built our way up to making full CAD designs for each mechanism,” explained Izzy Martinez, one of two mechanical subteam leads.

After the one-week prototyping phase was finished, the team voted on which subsystems they determined would be best for the competition. This marked the beginning of the build and assembly process. Despite a thorough design process, assembly came with its own challenges.

“One pretty big challenge for us this year was the elevator system (which allows the robot to reach higher than 6 feet) because we decided that we were going to change it drastically from our design a couple of years ago…” Martinez said.

Typically, the Dreadbots’ robots use similar subsystems, allowing the team to use previous designs in future robots, but the elevator was improved this year to use a far more robust and efficient system that has yet to fail.

Another challenge came from the time crunch of competing in the very first week. Of the six weeks allotted, the mechanical team only had five of those weeks, while the programming subteam and drive team had one week each, and the electrical subteam had only about one weekend to wire all the systems together. Typically, the team has at least one more week than that, and even then, it’s a challenge to complete, test, and debug the robot. Fortunately, the gift of a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine from the Dexter School District allowed the Dreadbots to cut custom parts out of sheets of aluminum or polycarbonate, making the design and manufacturing process faster and more flexible.

 “It has allowed us to make parts with far greater speed and much less error,” Darren Cronstrom, 2nd year Co-Mechanical Lead, said.

The pride of this year’s robot was its climber. This year’s climbing challenge involved the robot ascending via a steel cage hung only three inches from the ground. The primary challenge in building a climber mechanism was solving for the necessary geometry. “We ended up solving [it] … from trial and error using early season field elements that were made by team parents and mentors,” team mentor Dr. Sprague said.

A mock field made by mentor Mr. Huhn and Mark Tessmer allowed the Dreadbots to stress-test the robot and iron out its kinks.

“[The climber] outclassed every robot that was there… [it] was unusually robust and unusually reliable,” Dr. Sprague said.

The Dreadbots encourage Dexter students to join them.

“I would recommend robotics because it builds people skills.” Says Ella Walsh, a 1st year mechanical member.

The team can be contacted contact us at [email protected]. Children who are not in high school are also able to engage in robotics. The Dreadbots, whose team motto is “Building People by Building Robots,” and Dexter Community Education support K-8 robotics teams in Dexter through our DROID program. DROID teams build and compete in the fall. For more information, email [email protected].