February was an incredibly busy this month for the LigerBots. We marked the end of the build season and began competition preparation. As a New England team, we got our fair share of snow days. We lost 6 days to snow, an entire week’s worth of build season. However, we were actually able to utilize this time to our own advantage and not let it go to waste: we used Creo to troubleshoot many issues before actually building the robot; we developed code on our mock chassis; and we met outside of our normal meetings at different team members’ houses, even in the height of the blizzard, to work on our robot. As a result, we managed to finish on time. In fact, this year marks the first time we have not only completed the robot on schedule, but have done so with sufficient time for code testing. This could not have happened without the donations from our sponsors, allowing us to purchase robot parts in a timely manner as well as additional pieces with which to practice and gain experience. In preparation for competitions, we have worked on scouting, evaluating robots from recorded matches from last weekend’s competitions all over the country. After seeing these videos, we feel confident that we will have one of the better robots on the field. Our lifter is fast, our pickup is robust, and our tote retention is good (there is a rendered image of our robot below).

The business and outreach team has also been very busy. Outreach continued to organize and run events. We received the money from January’s month-long fundraiser at Whole Foods, which was a huge success! The team presented at a Providence Bruins hockey game, where we demonstrated our 2014 robot to the fans and let dozens of them drive it. This past week, we presented to rising freshman at the Newton South parents night in order to recruit for next year. We wrote our Chairman’s Award submission and are working on our video, which will be judged at the competitions. In preparation for these events, outreach has been designing new graphics and handouts for our t-shirts and pit banners. This year we actually redesigned our pit and our shirts, so that they look better and more professional.