It was a cold and snowy morning, but 48 FIRST LEGO League (FLL) teams braved the weather last Saturday to join in the fun at the FLL Massachusetts State Championship, hosted by the LigerBots at Newton North High School. Nearly 300 students thought like real-life scientists and engineers, competing with LEGO robots they had built, tested and programmed themselves, and presenting projects that defined and solved real world problems centered on this year’s theme, “Animal Allies.”

The projects showcased an impressively wide range of solutions to animal-based problems, including the use of rodents for search and rescue missions, the creation of an app and sensor to warn of heat stroke in dogs, and the invention of a floating, automatic fish feeder that was actually adopted by a local fish hatchery.

Newton, the host city, sent four teams: The Snowy Owls, the Botanists, the Day Dragons, and Block Party. The Botanists took home second place in Robot Strategy & Innovation, and Block Party received second place in Gracious Professionalism!

The LigerBots also opened the doors of Newton North to many local companies so they could showcase their amazing products at a mini maker fair, and also hosted First Robotics Team 5422, Stormgears, who demonstrated their robot alongside the LigerBots in a robot zoo.

This was the largest competition the LigerBots have hosted to date, with about 800 volunteers, judges, mentors, and spectators cheering the FLL teams on. Dozens of LigerBots staffed every aspect of the event, devoting many hours to setting up, guiding teams through their day, leading a line dancing party before the awards ceremony, and putting Newton North High School back into shape after it was all over.

Many thanks to all teams, judges, and exhibitors for their contributions to yet another successful LigerBots-run event.

Written by Javid Kasraie

Imagine the halls of Newton North High School filled with 800 people, all cheering on robots built by kids who are as young as 8 years old. That’s what it will be like this weekend when more than 400 coaches, parents, siblings, and spectators, watch 48 different teams compete against each other for the title of Eastern State Champion in the FIRST LEGO League competition.

All of the 293 kids competing earned their way to this big event by competing in one of many FLL qualifying events.

In addition to what’s happening with the robots, we’ll also have a host of other STEM activities like big robots and hands-on activities. It’s all taking place this Saturday at Newton North High School from 9:00am to 3:00pm. Can’t wait to see you all there!

The LigerBots FIRST® 2017 Safety Animation Award submission is ready!

These 40 second animated videos are created by students from many FIRST® Robotics Competition (FRC) teams each year for the FIRST® Safety Animation Award. They combine an educational message about safety with fun art and animation. The winning ones, deemed by the judges at FIRST® to be the best, get to be shown on a big screen at the beginning of FRC competitions! A couple of LigerBots spent dozens of hours using 3D computer animation software to create our video, which has a steampunk theme. We hope that our submission will be chosen by FIRST® and that it will have a lasting impact the community.

This is the LigerBots’ 3rd year submitting a video for the award. Our biggest challenge this year was a new animation technique. Our student animators from previous years used stop motion, a technique where many images are taken of physical models, such as playdough, or paper cutouts. This year we used 3D animation computer software which proved to be a vastly different process. Computer generated imagery need to be rendered, or drawn out by the computer. Render time was a challenge because of the award submission deadline. And this can take many many hours of valuable time! Despite these challenges, our animation team finished before the deadline and we are all very proud of our unique end result.

The LigerBots will host the FLL Eastern Massachusetts State Championship tournament on Sat. December 17 at Newton North High School, from 9-3. Forty-eight FLL teams are expected, and the public is invited to view the event.

Last Saturday the LigerBots hosted the Newton Qualifier, a FIRST LEGO League (“FLL”) competition, in which 31 teams of students in Grades 4-8 from 14 communities across the state were challenged to think like real-life scientists and engineers. Six teams participated from Newton: The Snowy Owls, Tacocats, Roaming Rover, Kattattak, Day Dragons, and Atomic-Bots. Congratulations to the Day Dragons for being one of nine teams to advance to the Eastern Massachusetts State Tournament! (That tournament, with 48 qualifying teams, will also be hosted by the LigerBots, on December 17 at Newton North HS.)

For this event, each team defined and solved a real-world problem around this year’s theme, Animal Allies. At the event, the teams presented their research and competed to solve a set of robot game missions using autonomous robots they had built, tested, and programmed.

The event also included an exciting Maker Fair of demonstrations and hands-on activities, including 3D Printing & Artbotics by the LigerBots, Einstein’s Workshop, iRobot, Microsoft, Newton North Greengineering, Russian School of Math, Made@MassChallenge, Kevin Osborn (Maker),  Newton Free Library, Woobo, Empow Studios and Destination Imagination.

Many thanks to all teams, judges, and exhibitors — and congratulations to the LigerBots for their community contribution of careful planning, promotion, and execution of yet another successful event. #MoreThanRobots