On October 14, LigerBots attended the New England Robotics Derby (N.E.R.D.), an off-season annual Robotics competition at Tewksbury Memorial High School where our alliance placed third in the playoffs. 

This year, N.E.R.D. was co-hosted by FRC teams, #1474 The Titans and #4909 BIONICS. LigerBots placed third in the playoffs teaming up with FRC teams: #6328 Mechanical Advantage, #4909 Bionics. 

Over 30 teams participated in N.E.R.D. and hundreds of spectators from all over New England came to watch the competition.

“With a rookie pit crew and new people on the drive team.” said co-C.O.O. of LigerBots, Charlotte Storey, “I was really happy to see us go from the seventh seed alliance to making it third alliance overall.”

Throughout the event, efforts of getting first year members involved were made as multiple first year members participated in various activities in N.E.R.D., and the majority of the pit crew consisted of first years.

“It was my first time doing something like a pit crew and I learned a lot from the veterans on the team.” according to first-year LigerBots member, Felicia Ji.

On September 28th, 2023, The LigerBots hosted our annual open house for 46 prospective students, from Newton North and Newton South. The LigerBots open house is one of our most well known events, introducing the myriad of opportunities for new students to experience the different parts of our team. We began with a warm welcome and brief introduction of our team, where we talked about the various aspects of the LigerBots. 

Prospective team members had the opportunity to learn how to solder, make 3D objects, and more! Aligning with our team’s ideology of teaching STEM through hands-on approaches, we had students try out machinery in the shop and familiarize themselves with our shop tools through a tools scavenger hunt.

Students also got to experience driving the 2022 robot and some of our STEM activities for younger kids for our outreach events. Here, students compete in a competition to build the highest LEGO tower.

Members were given the opportunity to try making a graphic for the LigerBots, as well as look for a hidden image in Onshape, the software the LigerBots use for CAD (computer aided design).

We topped off our night with a celebration of cake, to cheer on our future teammates. Coming up soon is our FLL Qualifier on November 18th and FLL Tournament on December 16th.

On Saturday, September 23, The LigerBots participated in the Watertown Faire at Saltonstall Park, a public event hosted by the City of Watertown. We were glad to be invited by The KwarQs, Watertown’s FRC team to join them and two other FRC teams. We had a great time showing kids and families the 2022 robot and demonstrating the many things it can do!  Kids enjoyed feeding the balls into the intake and trying to catch them as they were launched out of the robot.  We also gave out team buttons and had some great conversations with people in the Watertown community about The Ligerbots and STEM.

Also on Saturday, The LigerBots was invited to a birthday party by a birthday boy that previously attended birthday parties we have attended. We ran STEAM activities like creating skeleton handprints, navigating a “human robot” through a maze, and a quick engaging lesson on DNA with origami.

Also happening this week, the LigerBots has been very busy preparing for its annual Open House to welcome prospective team members. While some veterans were hard at work prepping shop activities, others arranged CAD, marketing, and graphics activities, even developing new activities too! 

It’s getting colder and the LigerBots are kicking it into high gear!  First, some highlights from our very successful summer!

We were training students through project-based learning using a professional cloud-based software called Onshape. Using computer aided design tools, we designed parts for a demo bot that we are building this fall. Above is the design for our demo robot that we hope to build and show off at our upcoming Outreach events. 

Several LigerBots partook in a pilot summer internship at Northeastern University where we were split into two projects.

One of them was developing a teaching model for hematoma. Nurses from Brigham and Women’s Hospital were looking for a fairly low cost pelvic model to train and practice how to assess and palpate hematomas at the femoral vascular site.  The LigerBots, in cooperation with NEU’s Enabling Engineering program, delivered a model (pictured above) on time and within budget. 

The other project was a universal camera mount (pictured) for wheelchairs in Africa for the journalists of the Disability Justice Project.  They needed an affordable camera mount that could be stable, adjustable and hands free so that the journalists’ hands would be free to maneuver their wheelchairs over fairly rough outdoor terrain. Again, the team delivered on time and within budget including producing a detailed “How To” manual, instructional video and shipping options.  Over the course of the summer, we met with end users and mentors at Northeastern to work on these projects.

We also worked closely with a First Lego League (FLL) team based out of Newtonville. In the Spring, the LigerBots hosted an FLL Info Night to provide information about the FLL tournament and encourage families to form teams.  One team did form over the summer and the LigerBots provided them with support. They will also be attending our upcoming FLL Challenge Qualifier on Saturday, November 18. Learn more about the competition here: https://ligerbots.org/fll.

The LigerBots also worked to expand our STEAM activities for outreach events. Our Graphics Team has been working on STEAM activities linked here: https://ligerbots.org/educational-resources.

We also built our own FLL robots for outreach events. We currently have a very small robot with a catapult and a programmable drawing robot that encourages young students to learn to code. We also have a line-following table top robot.

Summer is always an opportunity for our team members to get trained in skills they will use not only on the team but potentially in their careers such as Onshape for CAD, program and budget management for projects, and problem solving for real world challenges.

Stay tuned for more about what our team has been up to since the start of the school year, how our team is shaping up and we are currently up to!

Watch the LigerBots smash your Halloween pumpkin with our awesome, robot-driven smasher at Newton City Hall, Saturday 11/4 from 1-5. In addition to the smashing we’ll have hands-on STEAM activities for kids!