On April 7 from 10:30 a.m. to about 7:00 p.m. and April 8 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., the LigerBots will compete with our robot, “Chronos,” in the Greater Boston District Event at Revere High School, 101 School. St., Revere, MA 02151. 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.

Coming out of our North Shore District event the LigerBots finished in the top ten, and participated in the quarterfinal matches. We have spent the last two weeks revamping our strategy and robot, so next time we hope to be number one!

The first change we are working on is adding climbing ramps! In the end stage of the match, alliances are given a chance to earn extra points by lifting robots at least a foot into the air. A newly-formed ramps group has been prototyping and testing various strategies all week. Now that we have a design, the group is fabricating the final products. Soon we will attach the ramps and do some field tests to get them competition ready!

In order to guarantee a top tier spot in competition, the team is also working on improvements to our autonomous mode. For the first fifteen seconds of a match, all the robots run automatically, and we want to be able to maximize those seconds to earn as many points as possible. Our programming group has been tweaking and testing new code for Chronos.

We also are improving our public speaking skills. Our Chairman’s Award group continues to practice its presentation for judges, and all team members are practicing how to answer technical questions about Chronos for judges and the public.

Our next competition is April 7 and 8 at Revere High School. Please join us in the arena to cheer on the LigerBots, or watch us compete live on  Twitch.

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: