Meet Bumblebee: The newest addition to the East Tech High School Robotics team. 

Back in January, Bumblebee was nothing more than schematics on a screen. After weeks of building and wiring, it took its first steps. Bumblebee is a lot faster than most one-month-olds.

With direction from team captain Stephen Marquez, Bumblebee’s four motorized wheels sent its square base careening around the robotics workshop at the Cuyahoga Community College Youth Technology Academy (YTA). It spun around and stopped on a dime, accelerating and handling with precision that seems impossible for a machine that feels about 50 pounds.

An homage to ‘Transformers’

Bumblebee has siblings, too. It’s just one of three robots built using a design by an alumni from Tri-C’s Cleveland-wide high school robotics team. That team and the team from Davis Aerospace and Maritime High School have their own bots based on the design. 

Although the three robots share the same schematics, they each have their own personalities. East Tech’s team decided on the name Bumblebee, an homage to “Transformers,” more or less naturally. The team was leaning toward naming the robot after a different Transformer, Slipstream. Then, they started painting. 

Gregory Moton, a member of the team’s pit crew, was tasked with spray painting one of the robot’s accent pieces. Looking at his options for colors, he decided to use both black and yellow on the same piece. With help from a member of another team at YTA, Moton splattered black paint over a yellow base coat. 

“Originally, we didn’t decide our name or color, so we were just kind of going with it,” Moton said. “We got it back to the table, and I think Steve said, ‘We should name it Bumblebee.’”

Bumblebee will have to complete specific challenges laid out by FIRST robotics, the league the Tech Warriors compete in. This year, FIRST designed its competition game around coral reef restoration. Drivers have to pilot their robots around a playing field, picking up two different kinds of objects and placing them in specific places to score points. FIRST released a video earlier this year that walks through all the details of the game.

The Tech Warriors have a busy schedule of tournaments lined up over the next few months. They’ll kick off the season at a competition in the Miami Valley at the end of March. 

Building Bumblebee

The Tech Warriors’ Bumblebee doesn’t quite transform into a humanoid robot like its namesake, but thanks to its clever design, it can do quite a few tricks. The robot’s driver has precise control of its movement thanks to special drive trains called swerve drives on each of its four wheels. 

Bumblebee’s design is tailored to the specific challenges of this year’s FIRST game. Teams can score more points if their robots place objects higher up on a metal frame meant to mimic a coral reef. The design for Bumblebee features an elevator mechanism so it can reach the highest-scoring spots. Attached to the elevator, it has two different kinds of grabbers, each made to pick up the two different kinds of objects in the game.

East Tech’s team opted to build Bumblebee from the ground up rather than repurposing parts from last year’s robot, named Static Shock. They want to keep the old robot intact so new team members can practice driving it, said Marvell Womack, the scouting manager. So far, the team has Bumblebee driving, but they haven’t quite finished the elevator yet. 

This will be Womack’s second year on the robotics team after Coach LaShawn Thomas recruited him last year. Since then, it’s helped motivate him to improve his grades so he can stay eligible for the team, he said. 

“I got my work done, and I went to the first competition,” he said. “Never looked back. It was amazing.”

Womack described himself as a hands-on learner, so tinkering with the robot has been good for him, he said. He wants to pursue a career in either mechanical or electrical engineering. 

“I want to do what I love, you know?” Womack said. “Like, it’s all good to make a lot of money and all, but if I’m not enjoying what I’m doing, I’m not gonna really have the drive to do it.”