We’re in the thick of the robot build season! The robot is coming together, and the enthusiasm in the team is infectious. The elevators for our two robots are nearly done, and we are building the final design of our intake. Our team members have been interviewed by a reporter from an international teachers’ magazine, and we had a visit from SharkNinja engineers.

For the past few years the LigerBots have built two robots, one that is sent to competitions and one that is used for testing and practice. We have to seal our competition robot into a giant plastic bag at the end of the 6-week build season and are not allowed to touch it until competitions start. However, after “bag day” we will still have a couple of weeks before our first competition that we can use our second robot to further test to mechanisms, fix potential problems and train our drive team.

We have finished the fence for our “switch” field element replica, and completed the design for the “scale” tower. We hope to be able to use both for practice soon. We have assembled one electric board for each of our two robots, and have almost finished both of the elevators.

We have started building and testing the final design for the intake. It consists of two arms extending outside of the robot with two wheels at the end of each arm. The wheels will pull the cube inside the robot while the arms can spread and narrow to accommodate different orientations of the cube.

We’ve had many visitors this week! On Tuesday a reporter from TES, an education publication based in the UK, came to interview team members. The reporter asked about the “maker” culture in the US and the role FIRST plays in keeping students interested in STEM and providing them with alternative, hands-on ways of learning STEM skills. He interviewed Cam and Arushi about being on the LigerBots and how the team has impacted their lives. It was an honor to be featured and we can’t wait to see the article!

We had a large contingent from Puma-level sponsor SharkNinja, including three full-time engineers and six co-op students from Northeastern, Olin, and MIT. They toured the shop and some might become mentors, which is thrilling for the team!