Last Saturday, forty-seven LigerBots in six cars braved zero degree temperatures to attend the FIRST Robotics kickoff at Southern New Hampshire University.

We joined FRC teams from all over New England to witness the big reveal of the 2018 robot game, “Power Up.” which has a 1980s video game theme, and to hear speeches by FIRST founders Dean Kamen and Woodie Flowers, New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu, and New Hampshire senator Maggie Hassan. During the pre-telecast announcements we received a special shout-out for our FIRST Safety Animation win, and everyone in the audience cheered!

Our hands-on exploration of the “Power Up” playing field that FIRST set up in the SNHU gym gave us an immediate sense of the challenges involved in this year’s game. We learned that points will be earned by tipping a see-saw-shaped goal and keeping it tipped for as long as possible by loading it up with milk-crate sized cubes. At the end of the game, more points can be earned by having robots climb up a large post with a bar at the top.     

The Sunday after kickoff we launched our annual Three-Day Design process. This activity brings every team member and mentor, no matter what their specialty on the team, into the engineering process, and leaves us all with improved ability to brainstorm, negotiate, organize, and present our ideas. On day one small groups of students and mentors discussed robot game strategy.

This year, one group learned a lot of unexpected lessons about strategy by using a miniature, LEGO, mockup of the playing field to run through a simulated robot game.

Day two was spent drawing and designing mechanisms, such as robotic arms and elevators, that will help the team perform well in competition. On the third and final day the groups presented and defended their strategies and mechanisms in front of the entire team.

With no time to waste in this pressurized, six-week build season, our student technical leaders took ideas from many of the Three-Day Design presentations and combined them into what they hope will be an ideal, competitive, robot design. Over Martin Luther King Day weekend the team had a two-day, off-site CADding blitz and work session that will give us a jump start on next week’s build. We can’t wait to get started, cutting metal, wood and plastic, wiring and coding to make a fantastic 2018 LigerBots robot!