The Dexter Robotics Team Headed to World Finals: Seeks Sponsors & Community Support

The Dexter Dreadbots Robotics team is urgently seeking sponsors after qualifying last week for the World Finals Championship in St. Louis, MO, April 24th-27th. The Team needs to raise $5000 to register to compete in FIRST's Final Competition.  

The Dexter High School Robotics Team was organized in 2011 by students, parents, and adult mentors at the High School in Dexter, MI. It started with 6 members and now has 20 students; one fifth of them girls. Last year, the Dreadbots competed in two district competitions. In the 2nd competition, the Team was part of the winning alliance and qualified for the Michigan State competition. The team ended the season ranked 26th out of 180. This year, the Dreadbots competed in two 2 district events and the State Championship. In its first event, the Team came in 2nd place and won the General Motors Industrial Design award. In its second 2013 district event, the Dreadbot was on the alliance that won first place and also received the Rockwell Automation Innovation in Control Award. As a result of these competitions, the Dexter Dreadbots finished the season 16th in the state of Michigan and qualified for the World Championship and is now actively pursuing sponsors and the support of its community to make the national competition affordable for its members.

In the FIRST Robotics program, teams from all over the world purchase kits to build robots and have to design them to perform specific tasks. After spending six weeks building a robot to accomplish the tasks, each team enters its robot into competitions with other teams to see how effectively theirs performs in comparison to the other robots in a game format. The FIRST Robotics Program was founded over 20 years ago by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway, with the mission of inspiring young people to be science and technology leaders by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering, and technology skills. The program offers many college scholarship opportunities to its participants and is supported by many engineering and technical firms around the world. (For more information about FIRST Robotics in general see: http://www.usfirst.org.)  

Students on the Dexter team work with parent and community mentors out of the garage of the team's organizer in Dexter. They practice driving and shooting in another teammate's barn. Because of its low budget and relatively small size, the team has really developed some great teamwork skills and had some tremendous learning experiences with regard to designing hardware and software, engineering basics and financial management. However, as the team embarks upon competing in the World Finals Championship and starts to grow in numbers, the team needs additional resources to survive including more mentors, more space and the financial support of its community.

To date, the team has existed on small grants from the Education Foundation of Dexter, as well as corporate sponsorships from NuStep, Dexter A&W, Terumo and Dapco and gifts in kind from other local businesses, but the registration fees and robot materials this year have totaled about $12,000 and the World Championship registration will cost another $5,000, not including travel and lodging expenses of approximately $300 per attendee. Therefore, the Dreabots are seeking to quickly raise additional funds in order to compete on a national level and make the program sustainable into the future.

If you are willing to help the Dexter Dreabots Team, please make out a check to Dexter High School First Robotics Team, Acct. # 662-431-6257 and send it to: Dexter High School, 2200 N Parker Rd, Dexter, MI 48130, Attn. Ms. Bastion. All donations are tax deductible. For more information about the team, contact the team's organizer, Mrs. Jennifer Bryson, at dhsdreadbot@gmail.com. To watch one of our competition matches, please go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0gzvoNuQv8. The Dreadbot is the small robot with the blue LEDs on the blue alliance. 

Thank you to all who have already contributed to our cause. The team is already making plans on how it can repay the community and inspire younger students to get involved in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).