The RoboDawgs

08/28/2026

We are excited to announce that the College of Engineering at Michigan State University is returning as a sponsor of VEX Robotics competitions! We have not missed a beat in Michigan and we will have a record number of VEX teams in the Great Lakes State this year.

Wanting to be part of this exciting new chapter, MSU has made the financial commitment to be a presenting sponsor for every VEX event being held at the Grandville Robotics Competition Center during the 2026-2027 school year.

08/11/2026

We host 14 different types of robotics teams in Grandville, giving 2nd - 12th grade students the opportunity to design, build, program, test, and compete with robots that play on the ground, in the air, and underwater.

Today we’re highlighting our Middle School VEX V5 program. The Grandville Robotics Competition Center, sponsored by Westwood AI is a regional resource supporting teams all over Michigan. Let us help you start a VEX V5 program today!

Grandville Middle school students compete in the VEX V5 Robotics Competition. This program is provided by the Global Robotics & Science Foundation. It is the largest and fastest growing middle …

08/04/2026

It’s real! We’re excited to see VEX Air finally taking off! Follow us and watch as we complete our testing of this exciting new drone on the official 2026-2027 Pick and Drop competition field. This is one of the most capable educational drones available - and it’s finally time to sign up teams and play the first competitions this fall. We’ve built and flown drones for 15 years and we’re going to put this one through its paces in August. We’ll answer things like -

Do all the sensors work as advertised? This big boy has a forward facing camera so you can fly it with FPV. It has a downward camera with color object tracking and and it reads April tags. It uses field patterns and its gyro and accelerometer to provide positional awareness. We’ll test ‘em all as we get ready to sign up teams and host Michigan and Midwest events.

We’ll also see if we can collide our drones with each other - these drones supposedly have forward and downward obstacle detection and avoidance.

Finally - our team really wants to try and jailbreak one of these. They have FTC approval for students 14 and over and the drones are designed to be flown over a competition field without a net to protect pilots or spectators. They claim that the drones will not exceed a programmed height limit or fly outside the field perimeter. Our kids love a good challenge and I’m sure we can jailbreak one of these and get it to fly out of bounds. The question is - how far outside reasonable use do we need to go to break free? We plan to compete with multiple fields under the competition trusses in our main arena - with no net. If we can prove to ourselves that this is safe, these drone competitions will be exciting for audiences that can actually see full-size, full speed drones compete without a net in the way.

Follow the RoboDawgs page and watch us put these drones through the paces! We’ve built and flown full-size drones in the Bell AVR competitions and we’ve flown the little drones with the RECF. Our kids build and race drones in MultiGP racing competitions. Let’s see what these new VEX Air drones can do!

08/02/2026

Our makerspace instructor has amazing experience with stained glass! We’ll be offering stained glass workshops in August - cost is $50 per workshop, which covers an adult or an adult & student.

The two-hour Stained Glass workshops introduce new students to the copper foil technique (Tiffany technique) using pre-cut glass pieces, marbles, gems, tiles, tinned copper wire & more. Depending on the class, students will take home stained-glass bug they have made, or a stained-glass butterfly. There will be no glass cutting in this class. MAC will pre-cut a wide assortment of butterfly and bug wings and will demonstrate how to make bugs more lifelike by working in 3D. MAC will discuss stained glass safety and students will learn foiling, burnishing, soldering, and cleaning their project. All materials & equipment are provided for each student including: vintage glass, copper foil, tinned-copper wire, 60/40 tin/lead solder, flux, flux remover, burnishing tool, soldering iron, fume extraction fan, safety glasses. You’ll make a bug in the first class you take, and a butterfly in the second class. Note on the schedule that some classes are adults only, and some are for adults with a student.

Adults who have completed a stained-glass workshop in August can also sing up for the Open Stained Glass workshop to learn some new things!

Stained Glass Workshop signup link: https://signup.com/go/YcqvsEe

Following is the schedule for our August stained glass workshops.

Wednesday August 5:
6:30pm – 8:30pm Bugs & Butterflies - Adult Stained-Glass Workshop

Monday, August 10
6:30pm – 8:30pm Bugs & Butterflies - Adult & Student Stained-Glass Workshop

Tuesday, August 11
6:30pm – 8:30pm Bugs & Butterflies – Adult Stained Glass Workshop

Wednesday, August 12
6:30pm – 8:30pm Bugs & Butterflies – Adult & Student Stained Glass Workshop

Tuesday, August 18
6:30pm – 8:30pm Bugs & Butterflies – Adult & Student Stained-Glass Workshop

Wednesday, August 19
6:30pm – 8:30pm Bugs & Butterflies – Adult Stained Glass Workshop

Friday, August 21
5:00pm – 8:00pm Open Stained-Glass Studio for those who have taken a Stained-Glass class this month

07/03/2026

Everyone knows Grandville Robotics collects empty returnables to support our teams. Drop yours off after the holiday weekend and save yourself from the return room line!

06/19/2026

Coming in August! It’s time to have some fun! With the help of our graduates in the San Francisco tech community, we developed and have now upgraded a ClaudeCode tutor! We’ve set up a dozen computers and team members will build a basic clawbot with two inertial sensors, a VEX AI Vision Sensor, and tracking wheels. Then they’ll learn about advanced autonomous navigation in under 20 hours! Let the coding begin!

06/13/2026

And that’s a wrap on our 12th annual VEX camp. Had to believe that it was only 12 years ago when no robotics summer camp in Michigan would take both boys and girls So we started the RoboDawg VEX camp so ALL our students could attend.

06/11/2026

Sixteen teams - all have scoring robots! Camp Tournament tomorrow!

06/11/2026

Now that’s a robot! VEX camp!

06/11/2026

An afternoon trip to the island!