The LigerBots hit the ground running at the beginning of the school year as we prepare for the competition season, which starts in January. Our team members have been attending many outreach events, teaching skills to rookies, and preparing for the FLL competition we host in November and December.  

On September 22nd, we attended the Newtonville Village Day. LigerBots set up a booth along Walnut St, and we had our “Slime as a Scientific Experiment” activity, mini robots made out of toothbrush heads, and our 2016 robot. The kids really enjoyed making a mess with the slime and learning about the properties of glue! 

We also attended Beantown Blitz, an offseason competition hosted by Revere High School in Revere, Massachusetts, on October 19th. The event was perfect for rookies to gain experience driving the robot and experience a live competition. 

For instance, in advance of the competition, we held a scouting competition where the rookies scouted some matches to see who was the most accurate at capturing robot performance. “Scouting” is when members of the team record the scores of each team that is playing in order to collect data on teams. The top 5 winners of the competition got cream puffs and it was great training for Beantown Blitz!  

On Sunday, October 20th, a group of students, our robot, and our tent went to the Green Expo that was held inside the Newton Centre Harvest Fair. We encouraged kids to drive our robot and catch the ball it threw. We also had a hands-on activity of making a solar oven out of cardboard boxes, tinfoil, and plastic wrap, in which the kids could make s’mores! It was a great example of the intersection of sustainability, technology, and hands-on engineering. 

We also held our annual Parents’ Night in October. The parents got to learn all about our team and how they could help. 

The FTC team from the East Boston Excel Charter school came to our meeting in order to learn more about coding and software. Our coding lead was able to help them out! Last year, we helped them fundraise by supporting a Student Artists for Science event. 

We have also been busy maximizing our robotics skills and teaching rookies. The electrical team, for example, has been hard at work preparing training documents to help rookies learn information quickly. They have also been working on their pneumatics test bench to test pneumatic pistons. 

The strategy council is working on teaching and explaining scouting to the rookies. Scouting is filling out a chart of all the actions a robot did during a match. This data is then converted to a spreadsheet for data analysis. The council had the rookies practice scouting at Beantown Blitz. 

This Saturday, we will be at the Think Big Expo at the Newton Free Library.  Think Big is an event where middle and high schoolers talk with STEM experts. We are excited to be there and promote STEM careers in our community. Hope to see you all there!