by Amanda Hills and David Kwartler

At their first meet of the season, the Ligerbots competed at Worcester Polytechnic Institute from Thursday until Saturday.

Senior Paige Grody, the team captain, said that 34 teams participated, the majority of which are from New England. Some traveled from as far as Great Britain.

The competition featured a game of Rebound Rumble, a modified version of basketball in which minibots are the players, according to Grody. It is played by six teams at a time––three against three. Three bridges are lined up in the center of the 27 by 54-foot court and four hoops are placed at both ends of the court, each hoop hanging at a different height. The goal of the game is for the minibots to make it over the bridge and shoot as many foam basketballs into the four hoops as possible.

Each team had six weeks to build its competition robot, according to Grody. “This was a major challenge, as it always is,” she said. “We broke into subgroups and had specialists on each team.”

The team placed 32 out of 34 teams, but has “high hopes for the next competition,” said Grody.

The team will compete in another competition at Boston University next Thursday through Saturday. It will spend this next week recording and brainstorming how it can improve its robot, said Grody.