Yesterday, the Newton LigerBots high-school robotics team hosted the Newton Qualifier competition for 24 FIRST LEGO League (FLL) teams, including these 7 teams from Newton (in this photo, left to right):  Day Dragons, Vikings, Roaming Rovers, Outlaws of Newton, Tacocats,  Atomic Bots, and Newtronics.  Each team built and programmed a LEGO Mindstorms robot to accomplish 18 separate missions in the competition.  Each team also completed a research project related to this year’s theme, Hydro Dynamics, and presented results to a team of adult judges. Finally, each team was interviewed and scored on how well they exhibited FLL’s Core Values.

Newton teams won the following FLL awards:  The Day Dragons won the Champion’s Award. The Newtronics won the Teamwork Award. The Roaming Rovers won the Software Programming Award. And the Tacocats won the Research Project Award. The Day Dragons, Roaming Rovers, and Newtronics each qualified to advance to the Eastern Massachusetts State Championship, which will be held at Newton North HS on December 16 (again hosted by the LigerBots). That event, too, will be free, open to the public, and a lot of fun, with more teams competing and more hands-on exhibits in the accompanying Maker Fair.