The LigerBots, Newton’s dual-high school FIRST Robotics team, finished 10th out of 200 New England teams and qualified for FRC Worlds at the New England District Championship (DCMP) in Springfield, Saturday, April 18. The LigerBots and their robot, “Hermes,” will travel to Houston, Texas to compete, April 29 – May 2.
At the end of March, the LigerBots won the Greater Boston championship. Through victories this season, the team accumulated enough district points to secure a spot in the World Championship. The Championship consists of 600 teams from across the world.
In addition to their World Championship qualification, the LigerBots were awarded the Autonomous Award, which recognizes a team for “consistent, reliable, and high-performance robot operation.” The award refers to the 20-second period in the beginning of each match in which robots operate without human drivers.
Senior Aaron Parker, who works on the autonomous function of the LigerBots robot, said that in each alliance of three robots, the third robot generally does not have a significant role during the autonomous period. However, Parker described the unique method that allowed the LigerBots to have a particularly successful autonomous period.
“We really focused on getting our alliance synergy up by getting the [other] two robots running their regular paths, but having our third robot also time up with our other robots to go out as well,” Paker said.
After the autonomous period of each match, team members drive the robot remotely. According to LigerBots head coach John Fitzpatrick, the team was able to secure three playoff wins in large part due to their skilled drive team, equipped with a driver, coach, and strategist.
“Our driver [Zach Housman] is a senior now,” Fitzpatrick said. “He is unquestionably one of the best drivers in the world in my opinion.”
LigerBots coach Jake Hendrickson said that the team had a strong performance, holding their own in a match against the number one alliance before experiencing a narrow loss.
According to Paker, the outcome of DCMP was “absolutely wonderful.”
“We haven’t won an award at DCMP for the past two years, and we haven’t gotten two wins at DCMP in the past two years, either,” Paker said.
Fitzpatrick said that the team worked tirelessly to improve their robot throughout the competition season, enabling their success at DCMP.
“The amount of work that they put in, in two weeks, to make that robot so much better between our Week Two competition at North Shore and our Week Four competition at Greater Boston was amazing,” Fitzpatrick said. “The improvement was dramatic.”
Hendrickson said that he hopes the team will “be able to show consistent performance in qualifications [rounds]” and “get a good pick in alliance selection” at the World Championship.
“If we have a similar solid playoff run at Worlds like this, I’d be very happy,” Hendrickson said.
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