Dexter’s FIRST Robotics team #3656, the Dreadbots, easily qualified for the World Championships following a strong showing earlier in the month at the Michigan State Championships earlier this month at Saginaw Valley State University. The World Championships are this week at Cobo Hall (April 24-27) with the top 400 teams in the world attending.
The Dreadbots have now gone to the State Championship seven times and qualified for the World Championship six times.
Christian Vaughan, one of the key members of the team, says the Dreadbots have done extremely well and was proud of how the team fared at States.
“A personal goal of mine that I hoped to achieve was to match our performance at states from last year, which was to make it to the semifinals,” he said. “While we didn’t make it quite that far, we still did extremely well in making it to the quarter finals. We were challenged with a few issues with the robot that we had to deal with ASAP, but this was to be expected.”
Vaughan says States is normally the time where the abuse the robots take during matches begin to show and therefore more problems arise.
“We managed to fix all of these before they caused much trouble, so we were able to show off our ability to make quick repairs,” he said.
“As far as my goals for Worlds, I think it would be amazing if we could make it to the playoffs, perhaps even as an alliance captain,” he said.
Dreadbot teammate Gabrielle Riaz agreed that the Dreadbots came up big when challenges arose at States.
“We had a few issues, but overall I think we did well overcoming them,” she said. “We won the Imagery Award at States which was really nice (it made all of my stress and tears worth it)! I’m really proud of the progress our team has made in my time as a member, especially this year.”
Riaz would love to see Dexter make it to division final rounds at Worlds. “I would also like to get to know other teams as well and spread our Dexter spirit,” she said.
Andrew Merriman was on board with all his Dreadbot teammates.
“Our team did pretty good at States as this is the second year in a row that we made it to the elimination matches and we are ranked 40th in Michigan heading into Worlds,” he said. “My hope for Worlds is to make it to the divisional semifinal and even possibly winning our field.”
MAIN PHOTO: By Dan Robelen
