BattleCry 19 will be hosted by WPI this weekend and 60 FIRST Robotics teams (including us!) will be there. There are always rule twists, which make this fun. This off-season competition is likely our last for the year so if you want to watch in person, we will be there all day Saturday and Sunday.  Hours for matches are 10:15 am Saturday to about 7pm and Sunday 8:30 am to 5:30 pm. You can also watch live on Blue Alliance or  the NEFirst Red Channel on Twitch TV. Details can be found here .    The expected list of teams is here and you can check rankings here and our upcoming match schedule here.

The LigerBots had their best performance yet at the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) World Championship in Detroit this weekend finishing 6th out of 68 teams in the Daly division and advancing to the Division Semifinals before falling to the eventual world champion team. This is the LigerBots’ tenth season and the fourth time they have advanced to the World Championship, each time advancing farther than before.

Thirty-three LigerBots students plus a number of coaches, mentors and parents made the “LigerTrek” to Detroit this weekend to compete with over 400 FRC teams from around the world. The FIRST World Festival also included 128 teams competing in the FIRST Tech Challenge and over 100 FIRST Lego League teams including the Day Dragons, a team of four students from Day Middle School and and two from Pierce.

The FRC competition consisted of two full days of qualification matches in which each team competed in 10 matches. The LigerBots lost only one match, finishing with a 9-1 record which put them in 6th place overall in their division. This was the third best showing for the New England delegation which included 37 teams that advanced to the championship out of over 200 teams in New England.

The LigerBots captained the 6th alliance for the division playoffs on Daly, adding Team 188 Blizzard from Toronto, Canada, FRC 1024, Kil-A-Bytes from Lawrence, IN and FRC 4308 Absolute from Mississauga, Ontario. They won their quarterfinals match and advanced to the semifinals, but did not move on to the finals. The alliance they lost to in the semi-finals won the Daly Field competition and ultimately the entire competition.

A lot goes in to these matches: a skilled and level-headed “drive team,” the ability to partner with other teams to decide what each of the 3 robots on an alliance will do in a specific match and of course a capable robot. Also critical is the scouting that team members do by watching matches and identifying specific robots with complementary abilities at alliance selection time.

Alongside the competition there were seminars, a “scholarship alley” with tables from colleges all over the country, and an innovation fair with self-driving delivery vehicles, advanced medical technology and other exhibits from companies interested in engaging students interested in STEM.

Newton’s Day Dragons FLL team presented a seminar on “Applying Agile Principles to Your FIRST Lego League Team” which was well-received, and the students impressed the audience as they took part in a panel discussion following the presentation.

The LigerBots spoke to teams around the world about the ways they inspire and engage their community in learning about (and having fun with) STEM. In addition, they spoke to teams about their use of 3D printing and encouraged submissions to their 3D printed part competition which they created 3 years ago to celebrate the creative ways teams solve problems with 3D printing.

The LigerBots were excited to be a part of this event, and appreciate the community and corporate fundraising support that allowed the team to include as many students as were able to go. After some sleep and catching up on homework, the Team will be competing May 19th in BattleCry at WPI (a post-season competition).

We are competing in 10 qualifying rounds on Thursday and Friday (April 26th and 27th) on Daly Field. On Saturday, the winning alliance from each of the six fields will play in a roundrobin on the fabled Einstein Field. The six fields are: Archimedes, (Rachel) Carson, (Marie) Curie, (Marie) Daly, Darwin & Tesla. You can watch the livestream on Twitch TV or the Blue Alliance (which also has rankings and updated estimates of match times.  We are FRC 2877.

UPDATE: We extended the date to submit to the LigerBots annual 3D Printed Design contest to allow teams who are returning from Houston or headed to Detroit time to submit. The new date is May 1, 2018.

We want to see your creative use of 3D printing on your robot or for another team purpose. Individuals and FIRST robotics teams can submit 3D printed parts to share their innovative solutions to design challenges.  Please send submissions to [email protected]. For more details, please see the 2018 3D printed part submission rules in the flyer below.  You can read about the 2017 winners here and the 2016 winners here. We love seeing the creative ways that teams use 3D printing.

The LigerBots are going to the FRC World Championship!

After three great days cheering on our team at the New England District Championship at Boston University the LigerBots were excited to learn that we qualify for the World Championship in Detroit, April 25-28!

At the District Championship we built a reputation for quick and reliable delivery of Power Cubes to the Scale, and were ranked 17 out of 64 teams at the end of the qualifying matches.

We competed in the quarter finals on the fifth alliance along with alliance captain The Outliers from Portland Maine (FRC team 5687) and TJ (Squared) from Bridgewater, MA, (FRC team 88.) The LigerBots finished the event as the 24th ranked team in New England out of 209 teams.

At the event we had the chance to talk about our team with several VIPs. FIRST founding chairman and Chairman’s Award namesake John Abele stopped by our pit along with Mark Greenlaw, FIRST’s VP for Strategy and Impact, and AVID Technology, Inc. director Nancy Hawthorne. And, our own Newton South principal, Joel Stembridge, had a chat with several of our team members.

Two team-wide awards  won at District events, as well as our robot’s high ranking, propelled us to the World Championship. At the North Shore District Event the LigerBots won the Imagery Award for attractiveness in engineering and for outstanding integration of our robot and team appearance. At the Greater Boston District Event we won the Engineering Inspiration Award for our outstanding success in spreading STEM excitement. Coach Igor was a semi-finalist for the Woodie Flowers Award for excellent coaching, and CMO Doug was a semifinalist for the Dean’s List Award for outstanding student leadership. And, the team won the world-wide Safety Animation competition back in January, resulting in our safety animation video being shown at every FRC event this season.

The LigerBots are now known as a team with outstanding STEM outreach, enthusiastic FIRST promotion, and a dependable robot built by talented Newton students with help from dedicated volunteer mentors. We are well on the way to fulfilling our goal of being the leader of project-based learning in Newton.

Attending the FIRST World Championship is an excellent opportunity for the LigerBots to level up our team’s success in FIRST and Newton’s reputation in the world of STEM. In Detroit we will meet many people with similar passions and STEM positivity, and our team members will get to compete along with 400 high-ranked FRC teams from all over the world.

We could not have made this progress and had this opportunity without the help of our amazing team supporters. Thank you to you all!

Now we need to ask for even more help. Our trip to the World Championship will be a bit of a bank buster. Competition registration is $5000 with another $15,000 to pay for the bus (this year we can manage to get one) and that’s why the team is undertaking a major, short-term fundraising effort. We don’t get to go to the World Championship every year, and we want to make sure that every LigerBot who wants to come with us can make the trip.

If you’d like to help out, visit https://ligerbots.org/sponsor – or message us on Facebook or email [email protected] if you are a corporate sponsor.