This was the 33rd World Championship for FIRST Robotics Competition.

FIRST, established in 1989, held their first FRC Championship in 1992 with 28 total teams participating. This year, out of over 3500 FRC teams worldwide, 597 teams qualified to play across 8 fields named for famous Scientists and Engineers in history (Archimedes, Curie, Daly, Galileo, Hopper, Johnson, Milstein, Newton) with the winning Alliance from each field advancing to the World Final Playoffs on the Einstein field. The LigerBots were among those final 8 Alliances!

LigerBots’ Alliance deep into a match

Of the 80+ student members of the LigerBots, 33 made the commitment and trek to participate and represent the team in Houston, TX from April 29-May 2nd. We competed with 74 other teams from around the world on the Johnson Field.

LigerBots’ Drive team and their ally’s drive team driving in the tele-op stage 

We got selected by the winning Alliance on Johnson  field. We were in the 3rd Alliance that ended up winning on our field. Then, we went to Einstein, lost our first round, won our way back in the lower bracket only to lose again in Round 3.

 Dramatic shot of LigerBots’ robot “Hermes”

Hermes didn’t actually get to play as were picked to be backup defensive bot and never actually got called to play. We were picked by the 3rd Alliance Captain (Blue Devils FRC#6324 from Salem NH) and that Alliance ended up winning Johnson field. The other members of the Alliance were Team #4946 The Alpha Dogs from Bolton, Ontario, Canada and Team #2337 EngiNERDs from Grand Blanc, Michigan. 

 Drive team drivers dramatically walking to the playing field

We went on to Einstein’s and made it through to the 3rd round (which means we won at least one match…total 8 teams,  double elimination, so 6th round was finals)

 LigerBots’ allies’ robots in a game

A brief history:

FIRST started in 1989 and the first championship was in 1992. Then we, the LigerBots, came along, with 2009 as our rookie year. We’ve been growing and have made it to Worlds a few times this year. This year, we had an 80+ person team and they all helped. 33 members of the LigerBots made the commitment to represent our team in Houston over April 29th to May 2nd. We competed with 74 other teams from around the world on the Johnson Field, one of eight competition fields at Worlds. We got selected by the winning Alliance after very amazing playing, despite challenging team matches assigned to us. We went to Einstein, the ultimate division from the best teams around the world. We won one of our rounds but unfortunately were eliminated.  We see this as a very good season and behind the robot there were plenty  of unseen aspects that helped us.  Behind an amazing Drive team were amazing pit workers, people who cheered us on, and perhaps the least known of them, the scouts.

Enthusiastic cheering LigerBots team members featured on the Jumbotron

I see scouting as what makes FIRST feel like a sport. It feels like you’re collecting athlete’s stats. The only difference is these athletes are machines. That is the crucial data that alliances rely on to pick the best robots, the unsung heroes, the people who had tough luck and made good work with it. Behind every single game is six people working and people analyzing the data so every team  pick has a reason. The way our scouting data works is that we give people tablets and whatever they see the robot that they’re scouting do something they log it down. Then. this data is entered into a huge spreadsheet and then we finally mathematically analyze it to figure out which teams are good. 

Teams, including LigerBots, bump fists

“Scouting is what separates the mediocre teams from the prepared teams “, said Sebastian, co-lead scouting coordinator.

Behind every single game is six people working and people analyzing the data so every team pick has a reason.

Check back soon to learn about upcoming events, such as the Memorial Day parade and Flag Planting!