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For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology

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File:FIRST logo.jpg
FIRST Logo

FIRST, or For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, is an organization founded by inventor Dean Kamen in 1989 in order to develop ways to excite students about engineering and technology. The FIRST Robotics Competition is designed to inspire high school students to become engineers by giving them real world experience working with professional engineers to develop a robot. The inaugural FIRST Robotics Competition was held in 1992.

The FIRST LEGO League, a program similar to the FIRST Robotics Competition, is aimed at younger students. The FIRST Vex Challenge (started in 2005) is designed for high school students who don't have the financial, temporal, or other resources for the FIRST Robotics Competition. FIRST also operates FIRST Place, a facility at FIRST headquarters in Manchester, New Hampshire where FIRST holds educational programs for students and teachers.

Competition concept

The FIRST Robotics Competition involves teams of mentors (corporate employees, teachers, or college students) and high school students who collaborate to design and build a robot in six weeks. This robot is designed to play a game, which is designed by FIRST and changes from year to year. This game is announced at a nationally simulcast kickoff event in January. Regional competitions take place around the United States as well as in Canada, and Israel, but FIRST has a multinational following that further includes the United Kingdom, Brazil, Australia, and Germany.

Teams are expected to solicit local businesses for support in the form of donations of time, money, or skills. Some teams have membership of 60 or more and have established substantial presence in their local communities by helping local FIRST Lego League teams (see below), running classes in various technical topics, and more.

As of 2005, FIRST includes more than 1000 teams (around 20,000 students) competing in 31 Regional Competitions, as well as one championship competition held in Atlanta, Georgia.

Although FIRST encourages teams to compete robustly against one another for numerous awards and success in the arena, the organization bestows its highest honor, the Chairman's Award, on teams that best exemplify the FIRST ethos of "gracious professionalism". According to the 2004 FIRST Team Manual "...one of the most straightforward interpretations of gracious professionalism is that we learn and compete like crazy, but treat one another with respect and kindness in the process. We try to avoid leaving anyone feeling like they are losers. No chest thumping barbarian tough talk, but no sticky sweet platitudes either. Knowledge, pride and empathy comfortably blended..." FIRST teams tend to take this paradigm to heart, and, as many observers have noted, even during the fiercest of competitions rivals can often be seen complimenting or offering technical assistance to each other. In order to win the Chairman's Award, teams are expected to apply "gracious professionalism" outside the competition by participating in community service activities which further FIRST's mission of changing student's perspectives about science and technology.

Competition details

The competition is a yearly event. The most intense participation occurs in the first few months of the year, although on many teams activities occur continuously throughout the academic year. In early January, FIRST announces the details of a game to all participating teams. The game changes very much from year to year, with only a few rules such as the size of the robot staying the same.

For the next six weeks, often called the "build season," the teams begin to design a robot to play the game, essentially from scratch. This period's intensity makes FIRST the program that it is, and gives it personality. Team members spend the time designing strategies to play the game, drawing up ideas for robot parts, working with size and weight constraints, and finally, building and assembling their robot. Often, mistakes are discovered late into the build season, and teams must start over close to the beginning. Other challenges include gaining driver experience, building the electronics for the robot, and programming it. After the build season has ended, teams must ship their robot to where their first competition is.

Competitions for FIRST consist of many (about 30) regional competitions, and one championship event. Regionals typically involve around 40 - 65 teams. Teams are randomly paired into qualification matches, where they are ranked. Matches are relatively short, and only involve about 4 robots (depending on the game). The game changes every year, but for the most part, they involve some autonomous (computer controlled) robot operation for a short period of time at the beginning of a match, followed by a much longer period of remote control. Teams use scoring objects on the field to get points, which are evaluated only after the match has completely ended. In between matches, teams spend the time desperately trying to fix broken parts, and sometimes even add new ones right at competition. After the qualification matches have ended, the top 8 teams will pick partners from the remaining ones, and they resulting alliances will compete for a regional winner. The championship event is essentially a very large regional event, with four fields simultaneously playing matches. Teams must qualify through a number of means to be able to attend the championship.

This year's competition is called Aim High. It is the first competition in which FIRST has incorporated projectile motion.

Previous Competitions

FIRST LEGO League

FIRST Robotics' sister organization is the FIRST LEGO League (FLL). FLL is intended to further the same ideals that FIRST does but at a middle school level and utilizing the Lego Mindstorms for Schools educational robotics system, including ROBOLAB programming software based on National Instruments' LabView industrial control engineering software. The combination of interchangeable LEGO parts, computer 'bricks' and sensors, and the aforementioned software, provide preteens and teenagers with the capability to build reasonably complex models of real-life robotic systems.

2003's challenge was inspired by that year's Mars Rover mission, in that the competing teams had to design and construct robots to solve a number of problems like removing rocks from a 'solar panel' to ensure a Mars base energy supply, collect 'soil/rock samples' from the Martian desert landscape, as well as several additional subproblems.

2004's challenge was centered around various robotic assistant systems for disabled persons, and demonstrated how the systems are (hopefully) able to solve the given problems in a satisfying way.

2005's challenge is called "Ocean Odyssey" and the specifics will be announced on September 12th, 2005.

Once the rules are relased, like in the FRC (F.I.R.S.T. Robotic Competition) the teams must build and program a robot design. Once they have finalized the design, they must compete in competitions. The first place for competitions is the regional competitions. The top 1-10 from the regional competitions (depending on the area) go on to a larger area competeion. The final competiton is in Atlanta, Georgia at the Georgia Dome (just like the FRC robots)

FIRST Vex Challenge

The FIRST Vex Challenge is a mid-level robotics competition announced by FIRST on March 22, 2005. Its first competition was a demonstration competition at the national FIRST competition in Atlanta, GA from April 21-22, 2005.

While most FRC teams are school established in the form of clubs which require fundraisers to support a multi-thousand dollar price tag, Vex is more public and designed for people that do not wish to join such an expensive and generally school-oriented FRC team. Vex can be built by anyone, and the kit of parts is available at Radio Shack stores for $300 US. Vex Challenge robots are approximately one-third the scale of their FRC counterparts. The Vex robots offer greater control over robot design than FLL through the use of Erector-like pieces. The Erector-like pieces provide less flexibility than FRC, but provide a transition for students from the FLL competition to the FRC competition.

The VEX Demonstration at the 2005 National Competition featured a 1/3 scale mock-up of the 2004 FRC Competition, FIRST Frenzy: Raising the Bar.

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