| Award | Team # | Team Name | Organization | Township |
| Champion’s Award, #1 | 2228 | Exit 5A Robotics | Livingston Robotics Club | Livingston |
| Champion’s Award, #2 | 4618 | CyberHawks | Holdrum Middle School | Westwood |
| Champion’s Award, #3 | 18528 | Mega Bots | Neighborhood Group | Ridgewood |
| Robot Performance #1 (262) | 25231 | Robo Raptos | Family/Community | Fair Lawn |
| Robot Performance #2 (238) | 32581 | Flame Machines | Livingston Robotics Club | Millburn |
| Robot Strategy & Innovation, #1 | 11768 | Buzz Aldrin ETC | Mt. Hebron Middle School | Montclair |
| Robot Strategy & Innovation, #2 | 38069 | Short Circuit | Family/Community | Edison |
| Robot Programming, #1 | 23122 | Mindtech | Pierrepont School | Rutherford |
| Robot Programming, #2 | 5623 | The U.F.O.s | Youth Organization | Riverdale |
| Robot Design, #1 | 34957 | Robo Rockets | Home School | Parsippany |
| Robot Design, #2 | 31550 | Creative Circuit Breaker | Family/Community | Pennington |
| Project Presentation, #1 | 23828 | Primoris Lions | Primoris Academy | Westwood |
| Project Presentation, #2 | 4295 | COLAbots | Home School | Flanders |
| Project Innovative Solution, #1 | 30486 | Krypton Warriors | Home School | Parsippany |
| Project Innovative Solution, #2 | 7377 | Bender Bots | Neighborhood Group | West Windsors |
| Project Research, #1 | 9643 | Lego Lords | Immaculate Conception School | Annadale |
| Project Research, #2 | 15878 | Adroit Robotics | Livingston Robotics Club | Livingston |
| CV Gracious Professionalism, #1 | 21284 | Princeton Plutonians | J. Witherspoon Middle School | Princeton |
| CV Gracious Professionalism, #2 | 37130 | Spark | Family/Community | Princeton Junction |
| CV Teamwork, #1 | 3100 | STA Brainstormers | St. Thomas the Apostle School | Bloomfield |
| CV Teamwork, #2 | 37496 | SAS Squad | Family/Community | Old Bridge |
| CV Inspiration, #1 | 42053 | GearChangers | Family/Community | Plainsboro |
| CV Inspiration, #2 | 40223 | HOW BOT DAT | Family/Community | Somerset |
| Judges Award | 31287 | Beyond Infinity | Family/Community | Princeton |
| Judges Award | 32037 | Midnight Thinkers | Millstone River School | Plainsboro |
| Judges Award | 31107 | Trypticon | Government | Montville |
| Mentor of the Year Award | 4295 | Pam Heinrich | COLAbots | Flanders |
| Volunteer Award | Cheryl Broer | Mt. Olive |
2020-21 North New Jersey FLL Championship Results
Congratulations to all teams participating in this season’s FLL Challenge! (LRC member teams are shown in bold.) Award Team Number Team Name Organization Location Champion’s Award 32581 Flame Machines Family/Community Livingston Core Values 1st Place 9643 Lego Lords ICS Immaculate Conception School Annandale Core Values 2nd Place 16131 Robo Technicians Family/Community Ringoes Innovation Project 1st […]
11th Annual LRC FLL Jr Expo: A Virtual Celebration
This time last year, the 10th anniversary of the LRC FIRST LEGO League Junior Expo attracted 50 teams from northern Jersey (https://www.facebook.com/LivingstonRobotics/posts/1077684072427338). That sure was a tough record to beat! Earlier this year, we started to plan for this year’s Expo with the same fun fair. The highlight would be a “Building Newark” activity to […]
Our face shield making is in full steam!
Check out our projects related to COVID-19 at our COVID-19 Projects page. You can watch a live stream there. As of April 11, more than 300 face shields have been delivered to the frontline. More to be delivered daily.
LRC FLL Teams Competing to get “Into Orbit”
The Northern New Jersey FLL Championship concluded the super exciting and fun December weekend with team Exit 5A Robotics, an LRC member, taking home the crown jewel of the 2-day event: 1st Place Champion’s Award! They will be representing the region at the FIRST World Festival next year. Congratulations!!! Two other LRC teams that advanced to […]
Recapping Exit 5A Robotics’ FLL AMA FIRST Lego League – Ask Me Anything
Exit 5A Robotics held their FIRST (punny!) AMA (Ask Me Anything) session for FLL FIRST Lego League on Oct 14th. Held a concurrent online streaming session for people to ask questions as well as parents & kids attending in person. We had 63 interested respondents on Facebook with 8 Facebook’ers attending in person and 34 […]
2018 Northern NJ FLL Championship Award Winners
Posted by Editor on December 27th, 2018
LRC FLL Teams Competing to get “Into Orbit”
Posted by Editor on December 13th, 2018
The Northern New Jersey FLL Championship concluded the super exciting and fun December weekend with team Exit 5A Robotics, an LRC member, taking home the crown jewel of the 2-day event: 1st Place Champion’s Award! They will be representing the region at the FIRST World Festival next year. Congratulations!!!
Two other LRC teams that advanced to the Championship also got their hands full: Team Adroit Robotics received the 2nd Place Project Research Award, and team Flame Machines got the 2nd Place Robot Performance Award with 238 points.
Congratulations also go to teams RoboKnights, Robot Nation, Thingamabot, and WINJAS for successfully competing in regional qualifiers. Competition experiences and profiles of all these teams are being posted to our Facebook page:
- Robot Nation
- Adroit Robotics
- Flame Machines
- (more to come…)
Recapping Exit 5A Robotics’ FLL AMA FIRST Lego League – Ask Me Anything
Posted by exit5robotics on October 21st, 2018
Exit 5A Robotics held their FIRST (punny!) AMA (Ask Me Anything) session for FLL FIRST Lego League on Oct 14th. Held a concurrent online streaming session for people to ask questions as well as parents & kids attending in person. We had 63 interested respondents on Facebook with 8 Facebook’ers attending in person and 34 in-person RSVPs via Google. Wide variety of folks in attendance with interest in FLL and FLL Junior. The all-girl Exit 5A team was able to share their diversity of experiences including some FLL Junior, FLL, WRO, VEX. E5A’s panelists were equally diverse with some having 1yr of FLL experience, another coming from another FLL team, one that left the team in 2016, and one that aged out in 2018, and some with 8 continuous years of robotics. We had a table with our robots, and mingled afterwards with parents & coaches & team members. We hope it was a useful session for those that attended!
Entire session is available for viewing at https://youtu.be/PGn4Rn2Cgf4.
Thanks to Kelly Eagen from LRC & Spongebots for moderating.
Contact exit5Arobotics@gmail.com for more information, improvements, or suggestions for future events.
Learn About FLL via AMA with Exit 5A Robotics Oct 14th 4:00pm – 530pm
Posted by exit5robotics on October 9th, 2018
All-Girls Exit 5A Robotics AMA (Ask Me Anything) about FLL FIRST Lego League.
With 31 years of collective FLL seasons and 21 robotics competition events, the all-girls STEM’ers of Exit 5A Robotics are hosting a Team AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on Oct 14th 430pm to 530pm at Livingston Robotics Club (290 W. Mount Pleasant Ave, Livingston, NJ). We’ll also be livestreaming https://youtu.be/oLgBS7mWSfE and you can submit questions via chat. We’ll have a bunch of our FLL and WRO robots on display as well. Bring your robots if you have robot specific questions.
The call is out for parents, students, coaches to bring their burning FLL questions and unanswered mysteries of competitive robotics to the student members of Exit 5A Robotics. We don’t propose to know everything. We may not always have the right answers. We don’t always win and have at times been outright crushed at competitions. But we can definitely share the unique and rarely heard perspective of young roboticists.
Consider that the vast majority of information about FLL and competitive robotics is spoken, written, disseminated, and posted by adults who are coaches, mentors, or organizing competition committees. This event offers parents, coaches, and students the opportunity to ask questions and hear unvarnished answers from the E5A team, including current and former team members. The event will be lightly moderated by an adult mentor. In essence, ask anything but abide by FLL Core Values.
For those that cannot make it in person, we are also planning to stream the event online and field questions online. https://youtu.be/oLgBS7mWSfE
Agenda:
4:00-4:30 pot luck – light snacks & refreshments
4:30-5:30 AMA session (livestream starts 430pm)
September is here and it’s time for FLL, except …. who changed my Core Values?
Posted by exit5robotics on September 5th, 2018
With the busy summer vacations behind us, it’s an odd week of relative quiet brought about by a shortened Labor Day week and the start of school. That means only one thing for those in the know. It’s time to start ramping up for Into Orbit FIRST Lego League! For those returning FLL teams, there are lots of changes this season. So many in fact, that many things might seem quite oddly out of place. The 8 pillars of FLL as we have all so earnestly memorized and practiced are now, motto non grata (or depending upon the severity of your Jersey accent, “motto non grotto”)
• We are a team.
• We do the work to find solutions with guidance from our coaches and mentors.
• We know our coaches and mentors don’t have all the answers; we learn together.
• We honor the spirit of friendly competition.
• What we discover is more important than what we win.
• We share our experiences with others.
• We display Gracious Professionalism® and Coopertition® in everything we do.
• We have FUN!
How many times have you encountered situations in your lives and thought about which FLL Core Values applied? It has been the standard mantra for coaches and teams for over a decade now (or longer?). All gone! Well, it’s time for change!
Well not really all gone. It’s been reset, renewed, rebooted, refreshed, recast, repackaged, and re-purposed for a new generation of fearless STEM-ing young adults ready to make a difference in the world.
It really does make sense actually. In the intervening 10+ years that the “old” set of Core Values was done by FLL there’s been a massive transformation in the way we work, live, play, and communicate. We went from MySpace to Facebook to Instagram. YouTube didn’t exist in 2004. Now YouTube is watched more than TV. Among youth in 2004, the ratio of messaging app usage to email usage was 1:1. In 2018 that ratio is 10:1. Add in the physical changes in the world that seem to have accelerated in the last dozen years, melting ice caps, shrinking glaciers, record temperatures, and it is easy to see why change was needed.
It’s notable that the anchors of Gracious Professionalism and Coopertition have remained. In a sense, it is simply “do the right thing”. That’s how it was in 2005 and that how it remains now, “do the right thing”. From the FIRST website:
We express the FIRST philosophies of Gracious Professionalism and Coopertition through our Core Values:
- Discovery: We explore new skills and ideas.
- Innovation: We use creativity and persistence to solve problems.
- Impact: We apply what we learn to improve our world.
- Inclusion: We respect each other and embrace our differences.
- Teamwork: We are stronger when we work together.
- Fun: We enjoy and celebrate what we do!
It’s different from what we knew so well before, but on closer examination, it is so very appropriate for 2018 and beyond. It’s more inspirational. Solve problems. Improve our world. Embrace differences. Enjoy & Celebrate. Work together.
Embrace the core values change and HAVE FUN in your FLL journey this season!
Juniper Networks, Emerald Knights, RoboRocks, Robonators, Exit 5 Robotics, Pitch in at NJ World Robot Olympiad (WRO) Qualifier
Posted by exit5robotics on August 6th, 2018
The 2nd annual NJ World Robot Olympiad (WRO) Qualifier at the Liberty Science Center blasted by us this past Saturday Aug 4th 2018 and it was all made possible with a healthy dose of 31 volunteers from all walks of STEM and robotics. Juniper Networks sponsored the event and Liberty Science Center graciously provided the venue. Thanks to volunteer staff including:
- Emerald Knights FTC (FIRST Tech Challenge): Preston Wu – Design Award Judge, Anna Xia – Score Keeper, Angelina Chu – Interviews, David Samolkin – Video
- RoboRocks: Shining Wang – Sideline Ambassador, Jim Wang – Elementary Category Referee, Geoffrey Zheng – Photography
- Exit 5 Robotics VRC (VEX Robotics Challenge): Chloe Lam – Junior Category Referee, Tina Wu – Football (Soccer) Referee, Catherine Zhang – Elementary Category Referee, Erin Eagen – Emcee, Holly Lam – Event Organizer, Rachael Prokap – Sideline Ambassador
- Spongebots FLL (FIRST Lego League): Kelly Eagen – Emcee
- Robonators VRC: Punit Mahajan – Sideline Manager, Sharan Peshin – Sideline Ambassador, Eshaan Mahajan – DJ
- Exit 6 Brobotics: Ryan Lam – Sideline Ambassador, Bill Lam – Event Organizer
- FTC Referees: Kathy Rutherford – Senior Category Referee, Yitao Yu – WeDo Referee
- and thanks to Juniper Networks for supplying volunteers, Teamwork Awards, visitor gifts, and a photo booth!
Now the fastest growing robotics competition in NJ, nearly doubling in size from 11 teams in 2017 to 19 teams in 2018. WRO offers competition categories for elementary, junior high, and high school students. Competition categories include a selection of intensive programming and robotics building challenges for students from elementary to high school grades.
Thanks again to all the volunteers who made it possible for 19 teams to compete at this event. For more information on competing in 2019, contact BLam @ wro-usa DOT org.
LRC teams WINJAS and Exit 5A Robotics will be advancing to the WRO US Nationals.
Registration Open for NJ World Robot Olympiad Qualifier WRO at Liberty Science Center LSC Aug 4
Posted by exit5robotics on July 19th, 2018
World Robot Olympiad qualifier at Liberty Science Center on August 4th still has open spots. 16 teams are currently registered. It’s not too late to sign up a team. We already have one LRC team, Exit 5A Robotics busy getting ready for the qualifier.
Deadline to register is Friday July 27.
- Build your robot in the morning, compete in the afternoon!
- No coach or parent involvement at the event
- Challenge rules are online at https://www.wro-usa.org/
- 2 to 3 students per team
- Mindstorms EV3
- Competition Categories:
- WeDo (using Lego WeDo system)
- Elementary Regular (EV3)
- Middle School Regular (EV3)
- High School Regular (EV3)
- Open Category (similar to FLL Project portion)
- Soccer (EV3)
Spots are currently open for a few more teams. In 2017, three Livingston Robotics Club teams (Livebot – Elementary Category, Exit 5A Robotics – Junior Category, Exit 5 Robotics – Senior Category) qualified for WRO Nationals and two moved on to WRO World Finals in Costa Rica. This year’s World Finals will be held in Thailand in November 2018.
Sponsors: Lego Education, Juniper Networks, National Instruments
Contact blam@wro-usa.org for more information
LRC FLL Jr. Expo, May 19, 2018
Posted by admin on May 19th, 2018
The LRC Jr.FLL Expo (co-hosted by Thingamabot and RoboRocks) was held on May 19, 2018. The theme for the season was about human water cycle. There were 41 teams from 22 towns participated in our Expo.
See more on our 2018 Expo page.
Crossing the Finish Line of 2017/2018 Season with Design Award
Posted by exit5robotics on April 7th, 2018
Just completed the 2017/2018 VRC (VEX Robotics Competition) season today with the Design Award in the 60 team Open Category at the CREATE US Open Championships. A curiously circuitous path led us to this point, but we are definitely grateful to have gotten here. After a strong start to the VRC season, we reached the mid-point in early January a bit winded and uncertain of how the remainder of the season would finish out. The intricate balancing of family, school, sports, and recovering from the loss of five seniors finally seemed to have caught up with us. Building four robots for four competitions worked well until it didn’t at the 3rd & 4th qualifiers. With the help of long time e5’er, Erin Eagen, we even scratched out enough time to make a unique and witty video entry into the VEX Online challenge in the Girl Powered category. An hour of mentoring on time management was just the kick the our rookie all-boys sibling team, Exit 6 Brobotics, needed to win the top award at the NJ State VEX IQ Championships and qualify for the VEX World Championships.
We finally scaled back our ambitious robotics competition schedule with a renewed focus on learning and effective use of our time. Even with the respite, our 5th robot at our 5th qualifier in February yielded disappointing results. In parallel, as part of a three year effort, we finally gathered enough momentum to contact and recruit over 30 women’s robotics teams and STEM organizations for the 1st ever Women in Engineering Day at the Liberty Science Center, Feb 17, 2018. Great to see the participation rate ramping rapidly for young women in robotics. When we started in 2010, we were among three all-girls teams in NJ among all competition disciplines. Now in 2018, we find ourselves amidst a talented and successful crowd of over 30 young women’s robotics teams in NJ competing in FLL, VEX IQ, WRO, FTC, VRC, RCJ.
Returning to the drawing board with a 6th robot for the VRC NJ State Championships resulted in the Build Award and a moment of redemption. Aside from that, the 5 week run up to the CREATE US Open still gave us ample time to say “Hey…6 wasn’t enough, let’s make a 7th robot!” With a deep breath, we took the 6th robot and unceremoniously lopped off everything from the wheels up to create “Wally”, robot #7. With much of the team embroiled in ACT/SAT prep, the team decision to send only three members turned out to be fortuitous as they were refreshed, effective, and super cool at US Open. The season turned out to be a unexpected testament to effectiveness of unselfish individuals rising to meet the challenge for the overall gain of the team.
We plan to add 1 or 2 team members (9th-12th grades) to the 2018/2019 team. If you are interested, send us a message: e5r AT livingstonrobotics DOT org.
In the meantime, we’ll be resting up and looking forward to the 2018/2019 competition season of learning!
Design Award @ CREATE US Open Championships – Open Category
Build Award @ VRC NJ State Championships
1st Annual Women in Engineering Day @ Liberty Science Center with over 30 women’s robotics team and STEM organizations.
2017 Northern New Jersey FLL Championship Results
Posted by Editor on December 30th, 2017
| Awards | Team # | Team Name | City |
|---|---|---|---|
| Champion’s Award, #1 | 6544 | Green Machine | Princeton |
| Champion’s Award, #2 | 8421 | Princeton Unimators | Princeton |
| Champion’s Award, #3 | 4295 | COLAbots | Flanders |
| Robot Strategy & Innovation, #1 | 6963 | Spongebots | Livingston (LRC) |
| Robot Strategy & Innovation, #2 | 4618 | CyberHawks | Westwood |
| Robot Programming, #1 | 18528 | Mega Bots | Ridgewood |
| Robot Programming, #2 | 4774 | Madison | Madison |
| Robot Mechanical Design, #1 | 17505 | MidKnight Magicians | Plainsboro |
| Robot Mechanical Design, #2 | 18637 | RoboRocks | Princeton |
| Project Presentation, #1 | 31180 | OLO Robotics | East Hanover |
| Project Presentation, #2 | 24819 | Futuristic Engineers | Princeton Junction |
| Project Innovative Solution, #1 | 15878 | Adroits Robotics | Livingston (LRC) |
| Project Innovative Solution, #2 | 15560 | Shockwave Robotics | Trenton |
| Project Research, #1 | 31773 | Hyper Circuits | Parsippany |
| Project Research, #2 | 23228 | MidKnight Masterz | Princeton Junction |
| CV Gracious Professionalism, #1 | 31957 | Fried Circuits | Mountain Lakes |
| CV Gracious Professionalism, #2 | 11768 | Buzz Aldrin Etc | Montaclair |
| CV Teamwork, #1 | 3411 | Thunder | South Plainfield |
| CV Teamwork, #2 | 33598 | PeckBots | Morristown |
| CV Inspiration, #1 | 16647 | Cavallini Cardinals | Saddle River |
| CV Inspiration, #2 | 30296 | Robocraft | Parsippany |
| Robot Performance #1 (262) | 15880 | Robo Warriors (270 points) | Edison |
| Robot Performance #2 (244) | 25320 | Promethio (245 points) | Livingston (LRC) |
| Judges Award | 26361 | Roboclaws | Skillman |
| Judges Award | 16610 | Nanogurus | Morris Plains |