FIRST Robotics Competition

The FIRST Robotics Competition is a high school robotics competition organized by FIRST. As of early 2007, 1,303 high school teams of 32,500 students from Brazil, Canada, The Netherlands, Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and others compete to build 100 to 120 pound robots that can complete a task that changes every year. Teams are given a standard set of parts and the game details at the beginning of January and are given six weeks to construct a competitive robot that can accomplish the game's tasks. In 2008, teams competed in 41 regional competitions throughout March to try and qualify for the championship event in Atlanta, Georgia in April. Previous years' championships have been held in Houston, Texas and at Epcot in Walt Disney World.

Competition concept

"Raptor", Team 254's 2007 FRC robot.

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. The average team has approximately 25 students, but participation have ranged from 4 to 100.

Competition details

Intermission during Aim High in Los Angeles, encouraging teams to socialize

Competition at the 2008 Hawaii regionals.

The competition is a yearly event. The most intense participation occurs between the months of January and April, but "mini-competitions" are hosted by many teams in school gymnasiums throughout the 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 approximate size of the robot staying the same.

For the next six weeks following the kickoff, called the "build season," the teams begin to design a robot to play the game, essentially from scratch. 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. Other challenges include gaining driver experience, building the electronics for the robot, and programming it. After the build season has ended (usually the 3rd full week of February), teams must ship their robot to where their first competition is. Competitions for FIRST consist of 37 regional competitions, and one championship event. Regionals typically involve between 20–65 teams. Teams are randomly assigned alliances of 3 teams, which are paired into qualification matches, where they earn 'qualifying points', the calculation of which changes each year. The game changes every year, but for the most part, they involve some autonomous (computer controlled) robot operation for 10–15 seconds at the beginning of a match, followed by a much longer period (usually 2 minutes) of remote control. Teams use scoring objects on the field to get points, which are evaluated only after the match has completely ended.

The Championship event is held every year in April, often in a large stadium or convention center in the Southeastern United States. The championship event consists of four divisions of 85–95 teams competing on one of four fields: Galileo, Newton, Archimedes and Curie. The teams compete for the division championship title in the same way they would compete in a regional. The division champions then bring their robots over to the Einstein field to compete in an elimination tournament to determine the champion.

Competitions

• 2009: Lunacy
• 2008: FIRST Overdrive
• 2007: Rack 'n Roll
• 2006: Aim High
• 2005: Triple Play
• 2004: FIRST Frenzy: Raising the Bar
• 2003: Stack Attack
• 2002: Zone Zeal
• 2001: Diabolical Dynamics
• 2000: Co-Opertition FIRST
• 1999: Double Trouble
• 1998: Ladder Logic
• 1997: Toroid Terror
• 1996: Hexagon Havoc
• 1995: Ramp 'n Roll
• 1994: Tower Power
• 1993: Rug Rage
• 1992: Maize Craze

Kit of Parts

At the start of the FIRST season all of the teams receive the Kit Of Parts and the game description. The kit is a collection of the basic parts needed for a team needs to make a functioning robot. Teams are allowed to purchase additional off-the-shelf items with individual item value not exceeding US$400 with a total maximum budget of $3,500. The kit includes robot controllers, motors, speed controllers, as well as programming and design software. As soon as the teams receive the kit of parts, the 6-week build season begins.

Competition

Most FIRST regional events take place between Thursday and Saturday in a week in March. Thursday is typically a practice day where matches take place but do not count towards final standings. All day Friday and on Saturday morning, teams participate in qualifying matches. On Saturday afternoon, after the qualification matches have ended, the top eight ranked teams will pick partners from any team ranked below them, and the resulting alliances will compete to be regional winner. The top teams pick their partners starting with the top-ranked team, proceeding to the 8th ranked team, then back from the 8th team to the 1st team again. The alliances picked this way then proceed into elimination rounds, set up into quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals. Each quarterfinal, semifinal, and final is determined by a best-of-3 matchup between the two alliances. All 3 robots in an alliance that wins a regional earns a reserved spot at the championship event in Atlanta, although they still must pay the entry fee and for transportation.

Awards

Due to FIRST's mission to exposing students and the community at large to science and engineering, the two most prestigious awards they give out are awarded not to teams that have demonstrated the most prowess in the game, but to those teams and individuals who have done the most to realize FIRST's mission.

The only school to ever win every major award is Walnut Hills High School (Cincinnati, Ohio), who captured the four major awards from (1994-1996). They also won three of the four in 1996.

Chairman's Award

The Chairman's Award is the most prestigious award a team can win at a regional or at the championship, more so than even winning the competition itself. Demonstrating the prestige of the award, a team that wins a Regional Chairman's Award receives a reserved spot at the championship event so that they may compete for the Championship Chairman's award, regardless of their on-field performance. The Chairman's award was created to recognize teams that demonstrate the greatest commitment to spreading passion about science and technology into their communities and schools. Submission involves writing an essay of approximately 2,500 words (10,000 characters) documenting the team's efforts at spreading the message of FIRST, as well as student interviews with judges at the competition.

Woodie Flowers Award

The Woodie Flowers Award is awarded to a mentor within a team that the team believes has made a large contribution to them and deserves to be recognized. Criteria is based on how well the chosen mentor inspires the students towards better communication and engineering. Any regional WFA winner is eligible to be considered for the Championship WFA, though past regional WFA winners may not again win a regional WFA, to allow other mentors the chance to be recognized. The WFA trophy itself is a head-sized Möbius strip with bearings inside it.

Team Organization

The 2006 Triplets of 1114, 1503, and 1680. 1114 and 1503 won 3 regionals each, while 1680 won a silver finalist medal and additionally was a quarterfinalist twice

A FRC team typically has approximately 25 students, but can range anywhere from 10 to 100. Teams are also sponsored and aided by adult mentors, who can be professional engineers, teachers, parents, college students, or any other interested adults. The degree to which the mentors are involved varies significantly from team to team (see "Sources of Contention" below). FIRST's recommended season stretches the full year, starting with recruiting and fundraising in September to December, robot construction and competition in January through April, then returning to fundraising and community involvement events until August.

Community

The FRC community is generally very friendly and cooperative with one another; at competitions it is commonplace for teams to aid each other in repairs and improvements, even if the involved teams are slated to compete against each other. Most regional competitions have systems set up to facilitate the lending of parts and tools between teams. A notable example of parts-sharing is the One-Day Wonder.

Some teams also choose to collaborate during the build season. The degree of collaboration can range from sharing part designs to each team building the exact same robot. FIRST has encouraged this practice, as shown in an official Q&A response from 2006:

Q: Is collaboration between 2 teams acceptable and encouraged by FIRST?
A: Absolutely. Teams are encouraged to share their knowledge, experience, and innovations with each other on and off the play field, as well as before, during and after the competition season. Without inter-team collaborations, many of the central elements of the FIRST philosophy - such as distribution of technical innovations, team workshops, shared designs, software code-sharing, teams mentoring teams, team-run off-season events, etc. - would all be impossible. The whole concept of "coopertition" is based on the idea of teams helping each other to compete.

References

• Walton, Marsha (2007-04-14), "Robotic trio wins 'Super Bowl of Smarts'", CNN {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Ante, Spencer E. (2007), "Building Robots Builds Scientists", Businessweek

External links

• FIRST Robotics
• FIRST Robotics Wiki
• ChiefDelphi Forums
• FIRST Robotics Chat Room