It was the LigerBots’ show at the start of our first 2018 competition, the New England FIRST North Shore District Event, at Reading Memorial High School. LigerBots CTO Cameron played the national anthem on his trumpet, and we had the pleasure of watching our award-winning safety animation projected for the benefit of all 40 teams present.

Then the robot action began! We competed with our 2018 robot, Chronos, in 12 qualification matches and moved on to the playoffs along with the other top 23 teams.

We had some trouble in our first couple of qualification matches–Chronos tipped over in the first match after running into the Scale field element, and in our second match a wire came loose and we could not connect to our robot. After we fixed these problems we started doing exceptionally well, moving around the field very fast and placing a lot of Power Cubes on the Scale and Switch. We entered the playoffs in tenth place, and got picked by the sixth alliance, but were eliminated in the quarterfinals.

Our Chairman’s Award team gave a seven minute presentation for the FIRST judges, whose feedback was, “Excellent presentation. Keep doing what you’re doing.” 

We also talked to judges for technical awards in our pit, and to many young children who were at the event for FLL Jr. project presentations.

We had a close encounter with FIRST co-founder Woodie Flowers. A team member wearing our mascot costume had a chance to sign the shirt Woodie wears for that purpose at every competition, and then Woodie signed our mascot’s LigerBots shirt.

Over the weekend we acquired 32 district points that will help us move on to the New England FRC Championship in April. The LigerBots made three appearances on the field during the awards ceremony. We were formally presented with the 2018 world-wide FIRST Safety Animation Award. (Our Safety Animation will be played at all 160 FIRST Robotics competitions this season.)

The LigerBots also won the Imagery Award, which celebrates attractiveness in engineering and outstanding visual aesthetic integration of machine and team appearance.

Coach Igor also advanced in the nominations for the Woodie Flowers Award, which recognizes an outstanding mentor who inspires and challenges students.

Now we are back in the shop, constructing ramps we may add to Chronos and improving the software for our autonomous mode. We are looking forward to competing again, at the Greater Boston District Event, in Revere on April 7 and 8, where we hope to gain enough district points to make it to the New England District Championship.

You can see the rest of our photos from the North Shore District Event on our Flickr page.

It’s only a few days until the LigerBots’ first competition of 2018! We will compete with our robot, “Chronos,” on Saturday, March 17 from 10:30-5:00 and on Sunday, March 18 from 9:00-5:00 in the North Shore District Competition at Reading Memorial High School. The event is free and open to the public and will be live streamed on Twitch. All of our supporters are invited to come to sit and cheer with us in the stands and be escorted by a LigerBot on a “pit tour” of all the competing FRC robots.

Because of increased support we have been able to build not one, but two identical robots during the past three seasons, and this year we made our best use yet of this opportunity. In the weeks since we put Chronos 1 into its big plastic bag on the last day of build season we have finished our practice robot. Chronos 2 has been invaluable for driver practice, software development, and fixes and upgrades that we can install on Chronos 1 during the six hours of work we are allowed to do during an “unbag” session in our workshop. We’ve tightened belts, added camera mounts, and added wires and a cover to our intake.

Our software group has worked especially hard to make sure our autonomous mode is as good as possible.

A small but dedicated group has been developing add-on ramps to allow us to score even more points in the critical endgame.

And, even though we’ve been firing on all cylinders to perfect our robot, we have found the time to attend three outreach events during the past two weeks!

On Saturday, March 2 we volunteered at the Think Big STEM Inspiration event at the Newton Free Library. This event for middle and high school students offered the chance for students to talk to STEM professionals in small groups. The event was co-hosted by the John M. Barry Boys & Girls Club of Newton, Newton Free Library and Newton STEM.  We scooped ice cream donated by Cabot’s and hosted a table with info on the team–and took advantage of the chance to talk to people working in different STEM careers.

On Friday March 9 we displayed our 2016 robot at the Cabot School Invention Invasion alongside other projects made by elementary school students, including catapults, slime experiments, treats disguised as healthy food to trick parents, and personalized Pokémon cards. We launched balls from our 2016 robot to the kids and team members got to use their “elevator pitch” training to give parents information about the LigerBots and about FIRST programs appropriate to the ages of their children, including FLL and FLL Jr.  One LigerBot said, “I really enjoyed helping at the event, it was a fun way to get the community excited about STEM.”

On Sunday March 11 the LigerBots had a booth at the Boston STEM Fair at the Embassy suites in Waltham. It was a great event for kids of all ages to get exposure to STEM programs in the Boston area, and we were thrilled to have the chance to tell parents and kids alike about all that FIRST has to offer.

In addition to all of the technical work, the past few weeks of team meetings have included team-wide practice sessions in talking to judges and other FRC teams about the LigerBots, to help us vie for both technical and non-technical awards during our upcoming competitions. Our awards group is finishing our Chairman’s Award video and doing a dress rehearsal for the seven-minute presentation the group will give for judges at the North Shore District Competition. We’re looking forward to formally receiving the world-wide award for our Safety Animation video on Sunday afternoon. We can’t wait to “Power Up” this weekend!

On March 17 from 10:30am to about 7pm and March 18 from 9am-5pm,  the LigerBots will compete with our robot, “Chronos,” in the North Shore District Competition at Reading Memorial High School. The event is free and open to the public and will be live streamed here or here.  All of our supporters are invited to come to sit and cheer with us in the stands and be escorted by a LigerBot on a “pit tour” of all the competing FRC robots. 

UPDATE: Here is our match schedule for the qualifying rounds. Alliances will be selected for the playoffs mid-day Sunday, and playoffs will follow Sunday afternoon. You can see the rankings here:

The FIRST Robotics build season ends in the middle of February school vacation, and the LigerBots went full blast right through “bag day,” putting finishing touches on our robot, “Chronos,”  before we had to seal it in its giant plastic bag, where it stays until we compete.

While the electrical team mounted the pneumatics and wired the elevator, the group working on our Power Cube intake cut material for the next iteration of its design. Other students worked on getting the robot fit-and-finish up to standard by building bumpers and mounting the sponsor panel.

Meanwhile on the second robot, which does not have to be bagged, our programmers began testing code for driving and intaking cubes, and are currently testing autonomous modes.

On Sunday, February 17 the Ligerbots visited the build space of FRC 5422, Stormgears, who graciously offered us the use of their full size practice field on which to test drive our robot. While we were there we filmed our 2018 robot reveal video, which you can watch here.

While at the Stormgears build space, we noticed that the plates on the outside stage of our elevator were bending. The Stormgears made us a generous offer to use their pristine milling equipment to help us manufacture new steel plates, something that would have taken multiple days at our home shop, but was done in just two hours, thanks to them.

On the last day of the build season the team worked a twelve-hour day, finishing electrical details before removing the elevator and replacing the bent plates with the ones we made at the Stormgears. At the end of the work session we did more driving practice in the field house at Newton South. When we bagged the robot at 10 p.m, everybody celebrated!

In the next few weeks we will continue to practice driving and programming using the second robot, and will design mechanisms that could be added to the robot at competition.

We have opened our annual 3D Printed Design contest for submissions from other FIRST Robotics teams. Our team created this contest in 2016 when we realized there was no established FRC award for 3D printing, which teams increasingly use to build custom parts during the six-week FIRST Robotics build season. We hope this contest will encourage teams to start seeing 3D printing as a viable design solution for their robot. Teams can send their submissions to [email protected]. Please look here for complete rules.

The LigerBots also recently submitted applications for four major FIRST awards: Chairman’s (honoring the team that best represents a model for other teams to emulate and best embodies the purpose and goals of FIRST, ) Entrepreneurship, Woodie Flowers (given to an outstanding mentor) and Dean’s List (given to an outstanding sophomore or junior student). Our Chairman’s Award group is now deep into practice for their seven-minute presentation before judges at the FIRST Power Up North Shore competition at Reading High School on March 17 and 18 and at the Greater Boston competition at Revere High School on April 7 and 8. We are excited to compete for these awards at our two district competitions! Please come to watch us live as we compete at these events, or watch us in real time, online.

See the YouTube video of our robot in action on the playing field at the Stormgears, FRC Team 5422, who graciously let us practice in their space earlier this week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhyccJPUCFc