The LigerBots are hosting the first of two FIRST LEGO League (FLL) robotics competition for elementary and middle schoolers. On Saturday November 17th, about 25 teams of Massachusetts students in grades 4-8 will compete in the Newton Qualifier. Also open to the public will be displays of student solutions to real-world problems related to the outer space theme for this year’s game, which is called “Into Orbit.”

Alongside the competition, the LigerBots will hold a maker fair with hands-on activities for kids in the fields of science, technology, engineering, art, and math. FREE and open to the public.

Last weekend the LigerBots talked to students about the team, scooped ice cream for visitors, and asked and answered questions about STEM careers at the “Think Big!” event at the Newton Free Library. In an informal setting in the library’s concert hall, young visitors asked adults with careers in STEM, including our coaches Noa Rensing and Jordan Schwartz, about their successes, challenges, and achievements.

Noam Shoresh, a computational biologist from the Broad Institute at MIT spoke to more than thirty LigerBots in a packed lecture room at Newton North High School on Monday, giving us some introductory approaches to analyzing the large amount of data we gather on other FRC teams before and during competitions. The strategy council hopes to use this data analysis to predict how other teams will do in future competitions and to create better strategy on the fly when we play with and against these teams.

Our team’s computer science training for new recruits has begun with a “peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich robot” exercise. Students were tasked with giving instructions for making a pb&j sandwich to a coach or student playing the part of the robot. The “robot” had to do exactly what it was told to do, with no interpretation. It was great fun to watch as the “robot” took the students’ instructions literally–bread was smushed, peanut butter spilled and jelly smeared. This activity introduced students to the idea that computers do what they are told and nothing more, even if it is wrong, and that that computers can’t read between the lines and can’t figure out what was meant. We know our students will take this lesson to heart as they start coding our 2019 robot!

Gregg Mastoras, managing director at Harvard Business School Executive Education, trained student group leaders this week in preparing a 30-second speech that summarizes the LigerBots. Next week, our group leaders will train the rest of the team in making their own elevator pitches, with Gregg’s help. Elevator pitch training will familiarize our students with talking about the robot, the team, and FIRST, making them better prepared to answer questions from judges, other teams, sponsors, and the public at competitions, outreach, and fundraising events.

On Thursday, Nov. 5 the entire team will have training in how to construct a personal, 30-second speech describing the LigerBots and why you are on the team. Please come to this meeting! You will find that you use these skills all year as you meet awards judges at competitions and members of the public at outreach events who don’t know much about FIRST. It’s also a useful skill to have when you’re answering question on your feet at college and job interviews.

It’s been a winning week for the LigerBots!

Seventeen LigerBots trekked out bright and early last Saturday to Whitinsville, MA for the Bay State Brawl, our second off-season competition of the fall. This was another chance for our rookies to drive the robot, and they did great! We went into the playoffs in fifth place, and were the first pick of first-alliance captain team 3555, Aluminati. Our other partner was team 5494, Bizarbots. Our alliance ultimately won the competition!

These offseason competitions have been an opportunity for our new team members to get a taste of the competition environment: the field, the pit, the time pressure and the need for game strategy. The competitions also have provided first-hand experience with the FIRST values of “gracious professionalism” and “coopertition.” They allow our entire team to become better prepared for the rigorous build and competition season ahead.

In addition to the weekend competition, we’ve continued to run our newly-expanded preseason training. We have an especially busy training schedule this year since we have the largest rookie class in our team’s history. And, with this year’s addition of a strategy council, a graphic design team, student photographers and a writing staff, our training has become even more well-rounded, diverse and dynamic.

Our graphic design team has been working on flyers and signs that explain the principles behind STEM activities we often take to outreach events: brushbots, electrically conductive and insulating doughs, paper airplane construction and 3D printing. A number of our team members are learning to research, write, edit, create photographic illustrations, and graphically design an entire document themselves in Adobe Creative Suite.

Our new photography mentor and several students whose main interest at LigerBots is to document the team have kept us well supplied with pictures of our many activities. Please visit our Flickr page to see their work on display!

Our fundraising group continues to apply for grants from new sponsors and to contact our valued current sponsors for renewal, and we have started work on the maker fair we hold during the FLL Newton Qualifier every year. (This year, on November 17 at Newton North High School.)

The LigerBots have many technical training projects in full swing now. We have two fully-functioning FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) robots, outfitted with two different drive trains (tank and x-drive) and programmed with student-written software. We might add an arm to one of them, and are almost ready to take the other one apart and let a new group of students build it again.

Our students are exploring different combinations of wheel size, number of motors and gear ratios to achieve either power or speed, so that we’ll be ready no matter what the 2019 game requires.

We also started researching and sketching turret designs that might be added to 2016 robot we use for outreach. A group of students is learning to sew by creating new bumper covers for the 2016 robot in team colors of orange and blue. Our electrical group continues to learn crimping and soldering and will likely rewire last year’s robot as a learning exercise.

We are also testing different ways to use our manual mill to manufacture metal parts with tight tolerances, and increasing our team members’ manufacturing skills.

In our H-Drive project our rookies are learning basics of chassis design, and in programing they are learning about the standard code library used by FRC teams. We recently ran three introductory courses in computer aided design (CAD) and computer aided manufacturing (CAM). Now, students are continuing to learn them on their own from on-line tutorials so that they will be ready to CAD and CAM the robot quickly during build season.

And, more training sessions are planned during the coming weeks: elevator speech building and peanut butter and jelly robot. We hope to be more ready than we ever have been for the fast approaching build season!

This past weekend the LigerBots competed in the Beantown Blitz, an offseason competition run by FRC team 125, The Nutrons, at Revere High School.

Because this was a just-for-fun competition we allowed our rookies, mentors, and team members who have never driven the robot to get a feel for being on the drive team. They had a blast, and several proved to have untapped talent for driving the robot.

Part of the robot’s intake (one of the arms used to pick up and move game pieces) snapped during one of our matches, which gave the pit crew an opportunity to teach rookies how our repair pit works.

We were in fourth place after qualifying matches, and we were chosen during playoff alliance selection along with FRC team 2423 the KwarQs, by the second alliance captain, FRC team 1768, the RoboChiefs. We finished the day in second place, eventually losing to the alliance of FRC team 195 the CyberKnights, team 181 the Birds of Prey, and team 1965 the Firebirds. Five mentors and more than twenty students, ranging from rookies to competition-hardened veterans, came out for the day. Thanks to the Nutrons for hosting a great competition!