On Saturday, September 23, The LigerBots participated in the Watertown Faire at Saltonstall Park, a public event hosted by the City of Watertown. We were glad to be invited by The KwarQs, Watertown’s FRC team to join them and two other FRC teams. We had a great time showing kids and families the 2022 robot and demonstrating the many things it can do!  Kids enjoyed feeding the balls into the intake and trying to catch them as they were launched out of the robot.  We also gave out team buttons and had some great conversations with people in the Watertown community about The Ligerbots and STEM.

Also on Saturday, The LigerBots was invited to a birthday party by a birthday boy that previously attended birthday parties we have attended. We ran STEAM activities like creating skeleton handprints, navigating a “human robot” through a maze, and a quick engaging lesson on DNA with origami.

Also happening this week, the LigerBots has been very busy preparing for its annual Open House to welcome prospective team members. While some veterans were hard at work prepping shop activities, others arranged CAD, marketing, and graphics activities, even developing new activities too! 

It’s getting colder and the LigerBots are kicking it into high gear!  First, some highlights from our very successful summer!

We were training students through project-based learning using a professional cloud-based software called Onshape. Using computer aided design tools, we designed parts for a demo bot that we are building this fall. Above is the design for our demo robot that we hope to build and show off at our upcoming Outreach events. 

Several LigerBots partook in a pilot summer internship at Northeastern University where we were split into two projects.

One of them was developing a teaching model for hematoma. Nurses from Brigham and Women’s Hospital were looking for a fairly low cost pelvic model to train and practice how to assess and palpate hematomas at the femoral vascular site.  The LigerBots, in cooperation with NEU’s Enabling Engineering program, delivered a model (pictured above) on time and within budget. 

The other project was a universal camera mount (pictured) for wheelchairs in Africa for the journalists of the Disability Justice Project.  They needed an affordable camera mount that could be stable, adjustable and hands free so that the journalists’ hands would be free to maneuver their wheelchairs over fairly rough outdoor terrain. Again, the team delivered on time and within budget including producing a detailed “How To” manual, instructional video and shipping options.  Over the course of the summer, we met with end users and mentors at Northeastern to work on these projects.

We also worked closely with a First Lego League (FLL) team based out of Newtonville. In the Spring, the LigerBots hosted an FLL Info Night to provide information about the FLL tournament and encourage families to form teams.  One team did form over the summer and the LigerBots provided them with support. They will also be attending our upcoming FLL Challenge Qualifier on Saturday, November 18. Learn more about the competition here: https://ligerbots.org/fll.

The LigerBots also worked to expand our STEAM activities for outreach events. Our Graphics Team has been working on STEAM activities linked here: https://ligerbots.org/educational-resources.

We also built our own FLL robots for outreach events. We currently have a very small robot with a catapult and a programmable drawing robot that encourages young students to learn to code. We also have a line-following table top robot.

Summer is always an opportunity for our team members to get trained in skills they will use not only on the team but potentially in their careers such as Onshape for CAD, program and budget management for projects, and problem solving for real world challenges.

Stay tuned for more about what our team has been up to since the start of the school year, how our team is shaping up and we are currently up to!

Watch the LigerBots smash your Halloween pumpkin with our awesome, robot-driven smasher at Newton City Hall, Saturday 11/4 from 1-5. In addition to the smashing we’ll have hands-on STEAM activities for kids!

The LigerBots open house for prospective team members will be Sept. 28, 2023 from 6:30 –9:30 p.m. in the tech ed room at Newton South High School. All Newton North and Newton South students are invited. Masks required. Join us and learn about the team

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.

Interested in encouraging your K-8 child further into STEM through building LEGO® robots? The LigerBots will host its annual FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL) information night on Wednesday, June 14, from 7:00-8:30 p.m., at the Newton North High School Film Lecture Hall. You can register and find more information at ligerbots.org/fll.