During late May the LigerBots marched in Newton’s Memorial Day parade, met with our mayor, and attended several outreach events, all while wrapping up the school year.

We walked in the Newton Memorial Day parade in the cold rain, with our 2016 and 2018 robots covered in plastic bags when it drizzled, to protect their electronic components. Our team crossed the finish line at Magni-Coletti Park, tossing a ball into Mayor Fuller’s hands with our 2016 robot and collecting our Cabot’s ice-cream reward. It was cool to see all the people who came out in support of the veterans, even with the terrible New England weather!

We had another opportunity to meet with Mayor Fuller a week later when more than fifteen LigerBots students met with her in her office at Newton City Hall so she could congratulate us on our achievements this season. She also encouraged the girls on our team to run for leadership positions. She wore an orange dress to advocate for gun violence awareness, which coincidentally coordinated very well with our orange tie-dye t-shirts! We thanked Mayor Fuller for her generous contributions to the team, both personal and city-wide, and gave her a packet of information about the LigerBots.

During post-season we do a lot of outreach events. This week we attended the ECIA Conference and Newton South Science Day. We brought our 2016 robot to the ECIA (Electronic Components Industry Association) conference at the Westin Waltham Boston hotel and spoke about the FIRST organization with about 80 people in the robotics and electronic manufacturing industries, some of which were from companies that supply parts we have on our robot. They enjoyed driving the robot and catching the ball it throws.

At Newton South Science Day, a fair that showcases student science projects, we demonstrated our robot for our fellow students at Newton South High School. The students were very eager to take photos of our robot!

Please look for us in June when we do more outreach in our community: at the Weston Field School on June 9 in a demo for elementary school students, at Newton Highlands Village Day on June 10 from 11a.m. -4 p.m., at the Tour de Newton bicycling event on June 17 from 9 a.m. -1 p.m., and at our own FIRST LEGO League Info Night, at Newton North High School on June 20 from 7-9 p.m.

We recently held annual elections for the three general leadership positions on our team: the chief operating officer (COO), the chief technical officer (CTO), and the chief marketing officer (CMO). Eleven people made speeches advocating their strengths and responded to questions from the team about how they would handle the the tasks that would come with the positions. From among these the team chose three students that we know will do a great job of helping to run our team next school year.

We wished farewell to our seniors as they graduated from Newton North on Wednesday and from South on Thursday. We will miss them dearly and wish them the best in their college careers. It was a treat to have Mayor Fuller make a generous acknowledgment of the LigerBots in her speech at the graduation, saying we were a team she had learned a lot from.

All in all, May has been a wonderful month for us!

The LigerBots are hosting a FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL) information night at the Newton North Film Lecture Hall at Newton North High School (457 Walnut Street) on June 20th from 7 – 9 pm.

The event will include a talk for parents, and activities for children.

Newton’s Day Dragon’s FLL team will be demonstrating their robot.

Any questions email [email protected]. FLL immerses teams of up to 10 students, ages 9 – 14 (grades 4 – 8), in real-world scientific and technological problems such as food safety or recycling. See our website FLL page for more information. Free and open to the public.

The annual LigerBots Awards Night is coming up Monday June 11 at 6PM in the Newton South Cafeteria. This will include a potluck dinner for all LigerBots and their families. Please sign up here:
https://www.perfectpotluck.com/MNJE2228
with the food you will be bringing.

All LigerBots and their families are encouraged to attend. LigerBots Alumni are definitely invited.

The LigerBots will be bringing one – probably two – robots to march with our team during the Newton Memorial Day Parade tomorrow, Sunday May 27, 2018.   The parade starts at 3pm at Newton North High School – the team will be lining up on Elm St. at 2:30 pm – and ends at Colletti Park (at Bridge St. and Watertown St.) Here is the event poster  and similar information in the Newton Patch article.   There is NO parking on Elm St. or in the NNHS parking lot as these areas are needed to organize the parade participants.

Last weekend the LigerBots competed in the 19th annual BattleCry@WPI off-season competition, where we made it to the playoffs and finished in eighteenth place. We also planted over 600 flags for Memorial Day on the graves of veterans in the Newton Cemetery.

In the three weeks between the FIRST World Championship and BattleCry, we experimented with new code and built robot ramps to lift alliance partners off the ground for extra points during the end game. Some of these ideas didn’t end up working out, but building them was still a great opportunity for the team to try out new designs in a lower-stakes competition.

BattleCry never follows the official FIRST rules exactly. They add twists to the game to encourage teams to try new ways to play, and to just make things more fun. Teams often replace their driver and human players with junior members to train them for the next year. They even add their own awards, like the eponymous “BattleCry” award, given to the team with the loudest, most attention-grabbing cheers. All in all, the entire competition is one big experiment. In our matches, the LigerBots subbed in new human players and drive coaches, so that our newer team members could get experience in a lower-pressure, lower-octane environment.

FIRST is all about preparing students for college, whether they are planning to be engineers or business majors or anything else. Our entire season is full of experiences and lessons that will prepare us for communication, organization, and leadership. But, BattleCry also prepares us for spending the night in a college dorm. Twenty-three of us stayed in the WPI dormitories! Sharing a room with other people and still being able to function the next day is a very important skill in life. We were a little sleepy during our final two qualification matches on Sunday, but we still got picked by the eighth alliance captain, team 4909. After lunch, we participated in another tradition: the human player game. Everyone sent out team members instead of robots onto the field, where they raced to stack power cubes for a trophy.

We are looking forward to our next offseason competition, Beantown Blitz, next October.

This week, a group of LigerBots went to the Newton Cemetery to plant over 600 flags on the graves of veterans. On Sunday we will  march with our 2016 and 2018 robots in the Newton Memorial Day parade. We are grateful to have these two opportunities to remember our fellow citizens who served our country in the armed forces.