During our competition at Northeastern from March 27-28, FRC team 2877, the LigerBots, were chosen to be part of the second seed alliance along with team 1768 and 663; with our new teammates, we made it all the way to the finals which ended in two very close matches. After our performance at Northeastern, our team moved on to the regional championships at WPI which took place from April 9 to 11. After an intense series of 120 qualification matches, The LigerBots became the captain of the sixth seed alliance and chose team 230 and 558 to participate with us. During Quarterfinals match 2, the LigerBots received a standing ovation when
we righted Team 558, Robo Squad’s, robot after they had tipped over. The competition at WPI was intense and we congratulate all 60 teams that participated.

During the awards ceremony, the LigerBots won the regional Chairman’s award and secured our place as one of the top 10 New England teams to qualify for St. Louis. The Chairman’s Award is given once at each district competition for to the team that best represents a model for others to emulate, and embodies the purpose and goals of FIRST. At the regional championships, all the district winners are given a chance to compete against the other recipients; however, only four presentations are chosen to compete in St. Louis against teams from all over the world. In order to receive this prestigious award, a group of students must showcase the work they have done for the community by creating a written response to present directly to a panel of judges and to film a video demonstrating the impact we have made.

This year, the LigerBots are hoping to perform just as well at St. Louis, and are currently raising more funds to help get the team there.
If you wish to donate to the LigerBots, please go to http://ligerbots.org/support.php.

This weekend at UMass Dartmouth, the Newton LigerBots Team #2877 turned in an excellent performance in their first district meet of the 2015 FIRST Robotics Competition season.

We made it to semifinals with our alliance finishing third in the tournament.
We won the District Chairman’s Award, this automatically qualifies us to compete in the District Championship in April, for the chance to advance to the FIRST World Championships later this spring.
Three members of the team won nominations to advance in the district-wide competitions for individual awards:

• Head coach Charles Hurwitz will now advance to the district championship level for the Woodie Flowers Award
• Max Tepermeister and Ilias Vamvakas will now advance to the district championship level for the Dean’s List Award

Currently, the LigerBots are ranked 44th out of 175 teams in New England, with one more tournament to be played on March 27-28 at Northeastern and then the District Championship at WPI on April 9-11. As always, these competitions are a blast for spectators, too. Come down to Northeastern or WPI to cheer us on!

A special thanks to teams 5735, The Control Freaks, and 1027, Project Jabberwocky for their help in our elimination alliance.

This weekend at UMass Dartmouth, the Newton LigerBots, FIRST Robotics Team 2877, turned in an excellent performance in their first district meet of the 2015 Robotics Competition season. The team made it all the way to semifinals in this year’s ‘Recycle Rush’ game, with their alliance finishing third in the tournament. They also won the coveted District Chairman’s Award, an award celebrating FIRST teams’ efforts to spread interest in STEM in their community. The accolade also automatically advances the team and the robot to compete in the upcoming District Championship to be held at Worcester Polytechnic Institute on April 9-11, for the chance to qualify for the FIRST World Championships later this spring.

Also at UMass Dartmouth, three members of the team were nominated for and advanced in the competition for individual awards. Congratulations to head coach Charles Hurwitz for advancing to the district championship level for the Woodie Flowers Award for FIRST team mentor achievement, and to Max Tepermeister and Ilias Vamvakas for advancing to the district championship level for the Dean’s List Award for FIRST team member achievement.

Currently, the LigerBots are ranked 44 of 175 teams in New England, with one qualifying tournament yet to be played at Northeastern University, on March 27-28. Come down to Northeastern or WPI to cheer the LigerBots on.

February was an incredibly busy this month for the LigerBots. We marked the end of the build season and began competition preparation. As a New England team, we got our fair share of snow days. We lost 6 days to snow, an entire week’s worth of build season. However, we were actually able to utilize this time to our own advantage and not let it go to waste: we used Creo to troubleshoot many issues before actually building the robot; we developed code on our mock chassis; and we met outside of our normal meetings at different team members’ houses, even in the height of the blizzard, to work on our robot. As a result, we managed to finish on time. In fact, this year marks the first time we have not only completed the robot on schedule, but have done so with sufficient time for code testing. This could not have happened without the donations from our sponsors, allowing us to purchase robot parts in a timely manner as well as additional pieces with which to practice and gain experience. In preparation for competitions, we have worked on scouting, evaluating robots from recorded matches from last weekend’s competitions all over the country. After seeing these videos, we feel confident that we will have one of the better robots on the field. Our lifter is fast, our pickup is robust, and our tote retention is good (there is a rendered image of our robot below).

The business and outreach team has also been very busy. Outreach continued to organize and run events. We received the money from January’s month-long fundraiser at Whole Foods, which was a huge success! The team presented at a Providence Bruins hockey game, where we demonstrated our 2014 robot to the fans and let dozens of them drive it. This past week, we presented to rising freshman at the Newton South parents night in order to recruit for next year. We wrote our Chairman’s Award submission and are working on our video, which will be judged at the competitions. In preparation for these events, outreach has been designing new graphics and handouts for our t-shirts and pit banners. This year we actually redesigned our pit and our shirts, so that they look better and more professional.

With snow totals around 30″ over the past couple of days, the weather in Newton has in fact been frightful, but that didn’t stop the LigerBots. Because of the blizzard our schools were closed, and as such we could not hold our regular meetings at school, however we were able to get our robot, computers, and many of our parts to our CEO’s house, and work straight through the storm, some people even stayed overnight.

Not only did we not lose build time during the storm, but we actually gained some, and got a lot done: we finished our Creo (CAD) of the robot (above), we continued the assembly of our chassis, and electronics plates, we organized another event at one of our local elementary schools, and we started the process of approaching three new potential sponsors.

This coming week our programming group will be visiting a local software company, where they will be working on our vision tracking code for this year.