Masterpiece Season 2023-2024

The team continued it's success in the 2023-2024 season.  The Ribbots won the Champions Award (1st place) and Top Robot Game Performance Score at the Woodbury Regional, which earned them an automatic berth to the 2024 MN State Championships.  At the MN State Championships, they placed 11th for their robot game score.  The received callbacks (top 7 teams) for programming, creative innovation presentation, and for their innovation project idea.  They received a Judges' award for recognizing their impacts and logistical details in their innovation project and robot design presentations.  Based on their performance results, they were invited to represent Minnesota at the American Robotics Open Invitational in New Jersey, along with 60 other high-performance teams from across the US.  The Ribbots were partnered with a team from Pennsylvania as an alliance and their alliance was the runner up (finalist) for winning the Lightning Round robotics game.

Innovation Project

The Ribbots were tasked with the following innovation project: "How can you use technology and the arts to help engage others or increase participation in what you love to do? "  

The Ribbots are focused on increasing participation in hobbies for kids with special needs.  The specific project they selected as a team is to increase participation in Lego League for students with severe autism.  They created visual tools that would allow the students to communicate and fully engage in practices.  They started and mentored a new team called the Mighty Oaks, which was a team comprised of students from Deerwood Elementary's Connect Program (autism program).  They took everything they learned to create a How-To Guide for the FLL community to guide more coaches, teachers, and parents to start up additional teams for autistic students.

2023-2024 Robot "Tadpole"

The Ribbots have built a new box design robot with 4 attachment spots for the Masterpiece season.  They have named the robot the "Tadpole."  The team used the early season to learn some new coding blocks and will rely on the gyro sensor for turns this season along with a block to control the sharpness of their turns.  This season the goal is to rely on more passive attachments to free up motors, allowing them to combine multiple missions into one run.