GLADSTONE, Mich. (WJMN) – Landon Fee and Evan Zimmermann are seniors on the Gladstone Robotics Team, the BraveBots.
“We program the robot, we tune everything, get the functions ready, get everything ready,” said Fee. “There is a mechanical team that actually works on building and designing the robot. The electrical team wires everything on the robot. There’s social media teams that do all the social media and stuff. Accounting, because we need to manage the money because it costs a lot to go to worlds. There’s a lot that goes into it but we all work very well together.”
The many hours of hard work and dedication shows for the BraveBots this season.
“Making it to worlds is a multipart process,” said Zimmermann. “Part of it is qualifying which means we had to compete at regional tournaments, and through those we earned points that qualify us for the state tournament which we did. Once you play in the state tournament, our points and previous points I believe it’s three points you earn at states count towards your overall points to qualify for worlds. In the State of Michigan, off the top of my head I think they can invite 84 teams off of points alone. We qualify I want to say around the 50th percentile, if not a little bit higher so pretty comfortably in there for worlds.”
With the 2023 FIRST® Championship competition on the line, the team isn’t slowing down. It’s go-time for the BraveBots.
“We design it, we get ideas and concepts, then we make it,” said Fee. “Electrical wiring teams have to wire everything, they also have to CAT it out. So they have to draw it, so everything is nice and orderly so if we mess up when have something to go back on. We do that with the mechanical stuff too.”
Of course, they want to do well at the competition but they are proud of the journey they’ve went through to get to this point. With Landon and Evan being seniors, not only does this cap off a highlight to their high school careers, it’s also opening doors to a bright future.
“Well I’m going to need to be able to be able to program properly for one of my jobs,” said Fee.
“I’m going into software engineering or similar, so having the skills of not only working on an actual machine and just writing code to write code,” said Zimmermann. “Working in a team setting, and having other people check your work and run ideas past. It’s all really, really valuable information for what the actual field is going to be like.”
The BraveBots compete in Houston Texas next week. For more information on the competition, click here.
