Beyond whirring motors, pages long essays, and lines upon lines of code, the MachBusters 9097 robotics team is powered by people. As most students race to finish homework and study for tests, the MachBusters team races against a looming deadline. This month, The Leaf talked to two of the team’s leaders, Ryan Willike, 12, and Jaden Reyes, 12, to understand what truly goes into leading the robotics team.
Willike, the team’s build lead, organizes and manages logistics, works on the robot, and trains new members. He also communicates with the team’s coaches, selling them on the importance of using certain parts and providing the overall student perspective. One of the most impressive things that the build team does, he said, is hand-cutting every part used for the robot, meaning accuracy and knowledge are key to creating a workable robot.
The timeline of robotics is extremely condensed, Willike explained. “From the time we get what we need to do, to think of a design and to get the entire robot ready, we have around eight weeks,” including building, programming, and testing. To put this in perspective, though MachBusters is included on the Thursday spread, they actually meet almost every day.
The robot for this year’s competition is roughly the size of a washing machine, and requires a team of at least eight people working concurrently. While there are different leads for different aspects of the build process, Willike emphasized the importance of teamwork and collaboration throughout.
Another sphere of robotics, business, is led by Reyes. His team is in charge of raising funds, finding sponsors, and running outreach operations. The robot itself is $8,000, but combined with traveling expenses, the team aims to raise $20,000 each year. They also coordinate ‘FLL’ events for younger students, where they can make a lego robot and use it to compete. This past year, the business team also collaborated with Cincinnati Great Parks, to pilot an interactive exhibit promoting conservation efforts. By competition time, the team must put together the ‘Impact Award,’ a summary of all outreach efforts in both a 15,000 character essay and a 15 minute oral presentation to the judges.
For competitions, the team travels hours away–this year to Knoxville, Tennessee–with the whole team. The first day of the competition is for seeding, and during the actual competition the team is placed with two other teams, against a different side of three teams. They compete for ranking points and to be seeded into the actual finals. A single match lasts only around five minutes, and then the team has 30 minutes to fix any errors needed.
This year, during competition, the robot must shoot as many balls into a hoop during the time frame. To get extra points, a sub-objective is for the robot to climb at the end of the match. To make things harder, the first 15 seconds are completely autonomous, meaning that the programming team must code for this crucial time beforehand. After this, the driver of the robot (this year, president Tej Parikh, 12), controls its movements alongside three other members of the drive team. While all this is happening, the business team fields questions from judges about the scope of the entire club.
Within the club, Reyes said that “one of the most important parts about MachBusters is that it’s extremely student driven.” He also emphasized that the club is an amazing learning experience, and fosters a welcoming and accepting community. “It’s so inclusive. Even though we’re at a primarily White institution, a lot of members are not White, LGBTQ, female, neurodivergent, just people from all walks of life,” he said. This is especially important, as people of these backgrounds are very underrepresented in the engineering fields. “It’s always about the people,” Willike ended.
More than robots and technology, the MachBusters team holds connection, camaraderie, and friendship. Both Reyes and Willike emphasized the lifelong friendships and memories they have made as a part of the program. Students interested in joining can check out the daily announcements, or email Reyes, Parikh, or Willike.