CMS & Ponus Ridge Students Win Dream Battle Bots Design Competition

This spring, Norwalk Public Schools’ library media specialists at each elementary and middle school were presented with a unique opportunity to pair up with the National Havoc Robot League (NHRL) for an amazing Dream Battle Bot competition. 

Renee Neiger, the LMS at Cranbury Elementary School, developed the district-wide competition after seeing NHRL hold a similar competition this summer for their younger attendees. The NHRL is a combat robotics league based at 165 Water Street in Norwalk that hosts robotics competitions the first Saturday of every month. Teams from all over the state, nation, and world come to compete, and anyone can come and spend the day watching the robots fight.

LMSs who participated taught a lesson about competition robots and asked students to draw their dream battle bot. Each robot needed to have three things: a way to move, a way to fight, and a creative name. Students from Brookside, Concord, Cranbury, Fox Run, Marvin, Naramake, Ponus Ridge, Rowayton, and Tracy submitted their designs to their LMSs and three finalists were chosen from each school. 

Neiger delivered the designs to NHRL in mid-March, and the NHRL team selected one elementary robot design and one middle school robot design to be built. The winners were Livia Brock from Concord Magnet School and Dylan Adolfo Veliz Catalan from Ponus Ridge Middle School.

The NHRL designers will consult with the two finalists regarding their design and invite them back on June 6, 2026 to drive their robot in a competition—elementary bot vs middle school bot. The competition will be about three minutes, but NHRL will create video content of them working with the students to discuss the design and then have them help drive it at the event.