On Sunday, September 15, we ran a STEAM expo for neurodivergent children at WPS. The kids were very interested in the activities and it felt good to give back to the members of the community around us. FIRST is not just about robots, it’s about who you impact too.

We offered many outreach activities including slime, binary beads, skeleton handprints, coloring, legos, human robot, and of course the actual robot. Each station offered a unique experience for the kids to learn more about what we do.

At the coloring station, kids colored in templates of the liger, our team mascot.

At the Lego station, kids built freely using lego bricks. In this photo, Gabe and the student are building vehicles from the numerous Lego wheels.

Our robot is the main attraction at every event- we are a robotics team, after all! The 2022 robot shoots inflatable balls which are always a lot of fun for kids to catch.

This event was a success for us and the neurodivergent members of our community. We look forward to seeing you at upcoming outreach events!

This summer, 18 LigerBots took part in an eight week program through Northeastern University’s Enabling Engineering  internship.”During the internship, the students helped to design and build five different projects for patients, children and nurses in the Boston area. From July 8 through August 30, teams of four to six students worked with a budget of $500.00 each and met twice a week at Northeastern. They worked with clients,The Boston Home, New England Pediatric Care and Brigham and Women’s Hospital,and mentors to develop inventions for particular needs.

The first project was a wheelchair radar created for a child who is blind and has cognitive challenges, who hoped to be able to move more independently. The wheelchair emitted sounds each time it approached an object, which helped alert the child of an obstacle in his way.

Another group (which included students from Newton Lazer Robotics) designed a corn-hole shooter for children with Multiple Sclerosis. The result was a switch-operated “cannon” that could be adjusted for distance.

A switch-activated, portable catapult was the design challenge for another group. This device was created for children with severe disabilities who wished to engage in activities such as corn hole, velcro darts, and water balloon launching.

The fourth project was a universal robotic arm intended to help children who do not have the use of their arms and hands to engage in activities like cooking. This arm was created to pour and stir ingredients without the need for assistance.

The final group designed a hands-free sanitary light which allows night nurses to check in on patients in poor lighting conditions.

On the last day of the program, students presented their final projects to each other to mentors, and to family and friends.The leaders of NEU commended them for their imagination, participation and hard work.

The LigerBots, will host an open house for prospective team members on Sept. 30, 2024 from 6:15 – 9:00 p.m. in the tech ed room at Newton South High School. All Newton North and Newton South students are invited. This exciting event will include an introductory presentation about the team and hands-on challenges in many of the skill areas that we learn on our team, like mechanical and electrical engineering, programming, driving robots, CAD (Computer Aided Design), marketing, graphics, photography, and public speaking. Masks are encouraged but not required at LigerBots meetings. Closed-toed shoes are required in the LigerBots shop. For more information, email [email protected] or visit our team website at ligerbots.org.

On Sunday, June 9, 2024, the skies opened up with a deluge of rain, but that didn’t stop the LigerBots from participating in TWO events that day!

We love being a part of all the villages of Newton and Highlands Village Day is probably the longest standing village day in which we’ve participated since our inception in 2008.

Meanwhile in Cambridge, 23 LigerBots and 18 of our classmates and friends, came together and fielded TWO full boats to race along the Charles River representing two of the youngest boats on the river at the 45th Annual Boston Dragonboat Festival.

Dragonboat racing has been a tradition in Boston since the 1980s and involves 20 paddlers, a drummer and a steerer maneuvering a 40 foot long boat for 500 meters. A fun WET activity that truly tests a team’s ability to work as a team.

Competition weekend actually started on Saturday, June 8: when the LigerBots along with our other teammates (collectively calling ourselves the LigerBoat) competed in the morning time trials with the other 66 teams from the North East region.

The trial times would not only determine in which division we would race on Sunday, but also placed us for the specialty Youth Division competition. We fielded two teams this year – LigerBoat A and LigerBoat O and there was one other youth boat that combined high schoolers from both Boston and New York City.

The time trials featured two heats of 200M paddles, taking the average of the two times. While a youth boat is allowed to have adults as drummer and steerer, LigerBoat A was the only team that was comprised of all high school students as the A team had a student steerer and drummer.

They finished their trial with a time of 1:07.20, while the O team ended with a time of 1:16.31 resulting in us taking home silver and bronze medals respectively.

Sunday, June 9th, was the official 500M race and LigerBoat A qualified for Division E and LigerBoat O qualified for Division F. Of the six Divisions that competed on Sunday, the teams that made it to the Majors of Division A also moved on to compete in the Nationals.

The finalists would go to Hong Kong to represent the US in the 2025 Hong Kong International Dragonboat Competition. However, we just compete for the fun and thrill of racing and receiving medals.

There was some heavy rain at moments, but that didn’t stop the Ligerboats from having fun! Apart from boating, there were games, food, and socializing!

On Saturday, June 22, we hosted our largest FLL Info Session ever at WPS with over 57 families in attendance to listen in to our speakers and engage with our original STEAM activities as well as our 2022 robot.

The event lasted from 3 pm to 4:30 pm with crowds of people bustling through the hallways, excited to see all the different activities going on at the event. While the parents were listening in on our info session, the children would be exploring their options of STEAM activities and much more.

“A STEAM activity that was particularly popular with the kids was the slime.” said CMO, Felicia J. “The kids would make their own slime at the table and many were asking if they could make seconds or thirds, sometimes fourths.”

Slime wasn’t the activity to engage in at the info session, seven FLL teams attended and participated in FLL matches to show attendees what a FLL match is like and the amazing lego robots the members of FLL team built. While the FLL teams weren’t in matches, some were taking questions from curious families.

Some time towards the middle of the event, after attendees finished checking in and going around to see what we had to offer and display, we began our info session.

Our info session provides information necessary when starting an FLL team and the event itself would help attendees make connections as they begin to form FLL teams. One of our presenters is a head coach of LigerBots and actually is a previous FLL coach!

This year’s FLL info session was a blast, for both the LigerBots and our attendees. We hope to see some familiar faces at the FLL competitions we’ll be hosting in the fall and early winter as well as to continue inspiring younger kids in the field of STEM.

Speaking of continuing to inspire younger kids…

Before the end of school, the LigerBots had step-up days at our respective high schools, Newton North and Newton South. At these events we would bring one of our robots, Calliope (2024) at North and Prometheus (2022) at South, to drive and display for in-coming 9th graders, in hopes of sparking interest in robotics. We hope to see many of them next year on the team!