It has been just over a week into build season and the LigerBots have been doing a lot of amazing stuff. The Awards group is continuing their work on the Chairman’s Award and Safety Animation. The Business team is preparing for the Just Think Expo and the Horace Mann Science Fair. The Mechanical team has been working hard on prototyping and finalizing a design for the robot.

This year, we tried a new brainstorming technique. We broke up into six teams and each team designed a robot individually. Then each group presented their designs and we took the best parts from each robot. This was a great success as it allowed everyone on our team to have a say in the design. Overall, we have had a great start to build season and we cannot wait to see our robot develop into its finished product.

Build season is finally under way! The game has been released and we are gearing up for our best season ever. FIRST Stronghold is a medieval themed game that includes tackling a variety of defenses to score in the opponent’s castle. We have broken up into design teams to theorize game strategy and possible design ideas. Everyone is excited to present their ideas later in the week and for the season as a whole.

The Kickoff for the 2016 FRC game, called Stronghold, is this Saturday at 10:30 AM EST. If you can not make it to an official event, you can watch it “live” via the website http://corporate.comcast.com/news-information/news-feed/2016-first-robotics-competition-kickoff.

We are closing in on the final weeks before build season. The business team is continuing the heraldry brainstorm and are finalizing sponsor levels. The mechanical team finished the 2015 disassembly and is on the final stretch of finishing the rebuild of the 2014 robot. The robotic arm group is in the middle of construction and hopes to finish before the build season begins. The Ligerbots are looking forward to a great season and we would like to wish everyone a happy holiday.

This was a busy and productive week for the Ligerbots. Our awards team is deciding which awards we will be applying for and which students will be helping with each application. The business team talked about heraldry, an important part of this year’s game, and they also discussed the creation of sponsor levels. The three mechanical teams: 2014 rebuild, 2015 disassembly, and the robot arm, all made big strides this week towards finishing. Everyone has been doing great work and we are all excited for the start of build season.