Community Outreach
Lincoln Robotics Teams in the News
Two Carroll School Students in First Lego League Tournament ›
Three teams from Lexington scored high marks at the RoboNautica 8 State Competition ›
WWLP news featured a video segment about the February 28 FTC competition in Palmer, MA. If you watch closely for a robot marked with a "D" (at 0:25), the team number 2875 (at 0:52), or the students in blue shirts (at 1:32), you will see the MITiBOTs FTC team and robot in action.
Lincoln Robotics Teams
Robotics Outreach at Lincoln Laboratory (ROLL) mentors and coaches students in FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics competitions. Competitions are divided into the FIRST Technical Challenge (FTC) competition and the FIRST Lego League (FLL) competition.
For the first time, Lincoln Laboratory had four teams representing the Laboratory in regional tournaments. ROLL members served as coaches for the teams made of Laboratory employees' children aged 9 to 18 years. These teams met every weekend throughout the fall to build and program their robots and practice performing robotic challenges as set forth by FIRST.
FTC Team 2008–2009
FTC Team #2875 - MITiBOT (14- to 18-year-olds)
FTC Competitions
This year's FTC challenge, called "Face Off," involves placing pucks in specific scoring areas of the playing field while defending against the opposing robot. Each team builds a robot from a kit including gaming controllers, a metal building kit, 10 sensors, 11 motors, and 3 software packages. Teams may choose to use RobotC, NXT-G, or LabView when designing their robot. Matches consist of a thirty-second autonomous period and a two-minute driver-controlled period. During the match, two alliances of two teams will compete. To be successful, robots must navigate over a variety of surfaces to reach the scoring area.
FTC Tournaments
The first official tournament for the MITiBOTs was February 28 in Palmer, MA, where they qualified 3rd out of 26, capturing a great position for the elimination rounds. As captain of a 3-robot alliance, they defeated two other alliances to make it to finals. The MITiBOTs received a trophy and a medal for being the captain of the finalist alliance and coming in 2nd place overall. See the official results of this MA FTC tournament.
This rookie team developed its robot and handled the pressures of competition extremely well. They made hard, but professional, decisions, such as choosing to play defense instead of focusing on points, or reducing their own role in a match for the good of the alliance, showing maturity and contributing to their wins.
The second tournament was held March 7 in West Hartford, CT. The team won the tournament! In the elimination rounds, MITiBOT team won four straight matches to take first place. They received a special recognition award from the judges for technical strength and professionalism.
The terrific performances and hard work from this rookie team qualified them for the 2009 FTC World Championship on April 15–17 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, GA. After challenging qualifying rounds at the World Championships, MITiBOTs were seeded 20th out ofthe 50 teams in their division. (There are two divisions of 50 teams each.) In this competition, the top four teams become alliance captains and have two rounds of alliance selection. MITiBOTs were the third pick in the first round—an unusually high pick for a 20th seed—which reflected confidence in the MITiBOT robot. The MITiBOTs performed well in the elimination round, but unfortunately, the alliance was eliminated after the allied robots suffered hardware failures in the quarterfinal.
Making the quarterfinal put MITiBOTs in the top 24 teams out of the 100 teams at the finals, and 985 teams registered worldwide this year.
See the MITiBOTs billboard to get to know the team. A presentation created by one of the students provides an overview of the team formation, the engineering design process, and expectations for the team on the way to becoming Championship semi-finalists.
More Lincoln Robotics team photos
FLL Teams 2008–2009
FLL Team #3526 - LLAMAS (12- to 13-year-olds)
FLL Team #4316 - Smokin' Robots (10- to 11-year-olds)
FLL Team #4614 - Cheeseballers (9-year-olds)
FLL Competitions
In each FIRST-sponsored tournament, teams test their robots on a challenge course with multiple tasks. The months leading up to the tournament are spent programming and designing the robot to perform a select set of tasks correctly and with repeatability for maximum number of points.
The theme of this year's FLL challenge was Climate Connections. All robotic competition tasks represent some form of protecting the earth and its climate, such as testing levees, burying balls that symbolize carbon, turning lights off in a house, lifting an ice core sample, etc.
Not only are the teams judged on programming and robot design, but a research presentation also contributes to the final score. The research project for Climate Connections required each team to choose a conservation- or climate-related problem, explore how their community might be affected by this problem, and offer innovative solutions.
Regional Tournaments
The three Lincoln Laboratory FLL teams competed at Mindstorm Mayhem in Shrewsbury, MA on December 6.
The LLAMAS team won two trophies, one for robot design and the other for finishing 1st place in the robot performance competition. This team also posted the highest score of the day: 221 points.
The Smokin' Robots team was in the top 8 teams, and their best score of the day was 145. In addition to presenting research on wind farming in support of the Climate Connections theme, the Smokin' Robots explained the technical challenges faced during programming and were also judged on their team spirit and their ability to work as a team.
The Cheeseballers had a great experience, placing 28th out of 40—a respectable rank for such a young team. They improved their performance at each of the six head-to-head competitions. Their first run scored 30 points, but they scored an impressive 120-point run by the end of the day. Their programming strategy allowed them to modify the mission order between runs, enabling them to make big improvements.
Statewide Competition for Finalists
The LLAMAS and the Smokin Robots both competed at RoboNautica 8 at Worcester Polytechnic Institute on December 20. In the Robonautica competition, scores are based on robot performance, research presentation, and explanation of technical challenges, just as in prior qualifying tournaments, but a team interview score is also added. Official final results from RoboNautica 8 State Competition.
There were many lessons learned through this year's competitions. We look forward to the gracious professionalism, camaraderie, and inspiration of strong Lincoln Laboratory teams in next year's FLL and FTC Challenges.Prior to the elimination rounds, the LLAMAS team was ranked 2nd of 64 teams. In the playoff rounds, their robot beat all other competitors, winning the award for robot performance!
The Smokin' Robots team was ranked 20th of 64 teams prior to the elimination rounds. While in playoffs, the team was among the top 16 teams.
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