Three robotics team members tell what it means to them

By Ania Felder
Special Writer
After competing in the FIRST Robotics World Championship in Houston, TX in April, three seniors from Belleville High School’s “Bellevillains” team sat down to talk about their experiences.
Bailee Robinson, Carson Conley, and Desmond Reinhard each started their comments with what sparked their interests in robotics and how long they have each been members of The Bellevillains.
Carson and Desmond, who have been on the robotics team all four years of high school, began their journey in robotics at McBride Middle School.
“Both he and I did seventh and eighth grade First Tech Challenge, which is the level under the FIRST robotics competition,” Carson said. “And half of it got cut off by COVID.”
Bailee’s interest in robotics began more recently when she became a part of the Bellevillains her junior year. She had been encouraged by coach and BHS teacher [Aaron] Watkins all throughout her prior sophomore school year.
“Our teacher and mentor Mr. Watkins, everyday would be like I think you’re perfect for robotics you should join robotics. And I was like okay I’ll do it junior year, and I did.”
This is now her second year as a part of the team. She had no prior knowledge of robotics before joining the team but described herself as a quick learner.
“I definitely learned everything from scratch, but I really learn very fast,” Bailee said.
All three of the students are on the drive team and each has other positions as well. Bailee also serves as the team’s human player. “The human player interacts with the robot during the game. This year for example we had ‘coral’ and you would be the person giving the ‘coral’ to the robot.”
Carson and Desmond are both part of the design team. “We came together with ideas, and I kind of threw it together in 3-D CAD software,” Carson said. “And then we went to present it to the team.”
He explained how the robot’s designs are created. Caron’s other position is the robot’s driver, while Desmond’s other position is as the team’s operator.
“As a operator there’s two parts of the robot: there’s the casters which is the wheels that actually move the robot around, that’s the drivers side. The operator’s side is everything else,” Desmond said.
“Carson, since he’s the driver, he controls where the robot is on the field, and me, as an operator, I control what the robot does,” Desmond said.
The Bellevillains went into some more details, discussing what they experienced building their robot, hosting the FIRST state district competition, and competing at FIRST World Championships in Texas this year.
All of the robotics teams receive the game (the challenge the robot will complete) the first two weeks of January, and they have six weeks to build the machine. The name of this year’s robot was the U.S.S. Fury.
“This year we made a robot roughly eight feet tall. It had a big elevator on it, we designed it to be as efficient and simple as possible.” Desmond said.
Carson said that with BHS holding the district competition again this year, “It gives a different perspective of how the competitions happen, because most teams don’t host a home event. But being on a team that hosts the event you get to experience all the planning that goes into it.”
He told how the team competed in the state championship which qualified it for the international championship in Texas.
“So It’s a big process,” Carson said. “We have the Michigan state championship and then two weeks after that your robot has to be in Texas and ready to compete. So it’s a really quick turnaround.”
Bailee added, “It was really nice, because you get to meet all different types of people from around the world, like Japan, Panama, Mexico. It was really nice talking to other people. They have different experiences — competitions that they go to as well and it was nice to hear about.”
When asked about what it takes to be members of a world-champion competing robotics team, Desmond said, “To be a world-bound team, you really have to show a lot of commitment. Because without a decent number of people who’ve shown time and dedication, the robot won’t be complete to a high enough standard to be a world-bound competition robot.”
The world champion competing robotics team faced many successes and setbacks on the field, he said.
“We have mentors that are parents, friends of friends, that end up coming and helping,” Carson said. “We have one main mentor, Jeremy Church, who set the time and has been able to make it such a good learning opportunity that we wanted to get better through our career.”
A few of the robotics team setbacks this year were autonomous programming, several design changes to the U.S.S Fury mid year, and team scouting, which they said they overcame.
“I think for me and Carson for these last four years our program has grown, way beyond what it used to be, Desmond said. “Now for our junior and senior year we went not only to State, but also to World.”
Bailee added, “From what I’ve seen the last two years, we’ve also really grown in design and building, it’s shown by how far we make it. This year we won our first district event since 2018.”
“I think my biggest takeaway from robotics is just people skills, and how to have an open thought process and not be narrow minded,” Desmond said.
“I think learning that there’s a million ways to do the same thing, everyone’s perspective can come together and form one common goal,” Carson said.
Bailee’s overall takeaway from the program was, “You really have to put your whole heart and soul into something if you really want that thing to turn out well.”
The three seniors said they plan on returning to visit the program and possibly become mentors as a way of passing on their wisdom to the upcoming team after they graduate high school.