FIRST Robotics Competition

FIRST Robotics Competition
Current season, competition or edition:; Aerial Assist
	File:FIRST Robotics Competition (logo).png
Sport	Robotics-related games
Founded	Dean Kamen; Woodie Flowers
First season	1992
Commissioner	Frank Merrick
Motto	The varsity sport for the mind; Exceed your own expectations (2014)
No. of teams	2,720
Countries	17 countries United States ; Canada ; Israel ; Mexico ; Brazil ; United Kingdom ; Chile ; Germany ; Turkey ; Netherlands ; Australia ; United Arab Emirates ; Dominican Republic ; Singapore ; Colombia ; Taiwan ; China ;
Most recent; champion(s)	Chairman's Award Winner:; Team 27: Team Rush; Champion Teams:; 254: "The Cheesy Poofs" ; 469: "Las Guerrillas" ; 2848: "The All-Sparks" ; 74: "Team C.H.A.O.S."
Most titles	World Champions:; 71: Team Hammond (4 titles); Blue Banners:; 254: The Cheesy Poofs (37 Banners); Regional & District Wins:; 254: The Cheesy Poofs (27 titles) ; Longest Win Streak :; 2056: OP Robotics (19 titles) ; Greatest Combination in History :; 2056: OP Robotics and 1114: Simbotics (14 Regional wins together) ; Top Teams in USA: ; 254 (Cheezy Poofs), 67 (HOT Team), 33 (Kiler Bees), 217 (Thunder Chickens), 71 (Team Hammond), 469 (Las Guerrillas), 111 (Wildstang), 503(Frog Force), 359 (Hawaiian Kids), 118 (Robonauts), 16 (Bomb Squad), 148 (Robowranglers), 340 (GRR), 1986 (Team Titanium), 341 (Team Daisy), 1477 (Texas Torque), 1625 (Winnovation) ; Top Teams in Canada: ; 2056 (OP), 1114 (Simbotics), 610 (Coyotes), 1241 (Theory 6), 4039 (Makeshift), 781 (Kinetic Knights), 1334 (Red Devils), 1310 (Runnymede), 1503 (Spartonics) ; Regional & District Chairman's Award:; 27: TEAM Rush (8 awards); 340: G.R.R. (Greater Rochester Robotics) (8 awards) ; 503: Frog Force (8 awards); 1108: Panther Robotics (8 awards)
TV partner(s)	NASA TV
Related; competitions	FIRST Tech Challenge; FIRST Lego League; Junior FIRST Lego League
Official website	www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc

The FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is an international high school robotics competition. Each year, teams of high school students and mentors work during a six week period to build game-playing robots that weigh up to 150 pounds (68 kg). Robots complete tasks such as scoring balls into goals, frisbees into goals, inner tubes onto racks, hanging on bars, and balancing robots on balance beams. The game changes yearly, keeping the excitement fresh and giving each team a more level playing field. While teams are given a standard set of parts, they are also allowed a budget and encouraged to buy or make specialized parts. FRC is one of four robotics competition programs organized by FIRST.

FRC has a unique culture, build around two values. Gracious Professionalism embraces the competition inherent in the program, but rejects trash talk and chest-thumping, instead embracing empathy and respect for other teams. Coopetition emphasizes that teams can cooperate and compete at the same time.^[5] The goal of the program is to inspire students to be science and technology leaders.

In 2014, the 23rd year of competition, 2722 teams with roughly 68,000 students from 17 countries participated in the competition. Teams participated in 94 regional competitions, 4 qualifying championships and 40 qualifying championships. From those competitions, 400 teams won slots to attend the FIRST Championship, where they compete in a tournament. In addition to on-field competition, teams and team members also compete for awards recognizing entrepreneurship, creativity, engineering, industrial design, safety, controls, media, quality, and exemplifying the core values of the program.

Most teams reside in the United States, with Canada, Israel, and Mexico contributing significant numbers of teams.^[6] Roughly 2900 teams are expected to participate in 2015.^[7]

History

FIRST was founded in 1989 by inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen, with inspiration and assistance from physicist and MIT professor emeritus Woodie Flowers. Kamen has stated that FIRST is the invention he feels most proud of, and predicts that participants will be responsible for significant technological advances in years to come.^[8] The first FRC season was in 1992 and had one event at a high school gymnasium in New Hampshire.^[9] That first competition was relatively small-scale, similar in size to today's FIRST Tech Challenge and Vex Robotics Competition games. Robots relied on a wired connection to receive data from drivers; in the following year, it quickly transitioned to a wireless system.^[10]^[11]

Since 2005, the games have been played with two opposing "alliances" each composed of three teams. Prior to that, a variety of other formats were used, including 2-team alliances, 4-team alliances and 3 teams competing independently.

Starting in 1995, the FIRST Championship (and by extension, the FRC championships) has been held at a large venue, such as Epcot Center in Orlando, Reliant Park in Houston, the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, and the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis.

Over the years, FIRST has attracted the sponsorship of major companies such as Boeing, Microsoft, National Instruments, Google, Texas Instruments, and United Technologies.

Competition

Every year, a different game is played. However, many game rules do not change from year to year and the competitive structure has not changed significantly since the competition started. 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.^[12]^[13]^[14]^[15]^[16] Teams use scoring objects on the field to get points, and they sometimes get bonus points for achieving tasks such as ending with the robot on a platform, behind a certain line, or even hanging from a field structure.

Community

Members of the FRC community are 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". In 2004, at the Championship Event in Atlanta, GA, the Tottenville High School Pyrobots found themselves without a robot due to a shipping error. The Robotic Eagles (358), Adams Robotics (1340), the Killer Bees (33), and the Goodrich Martians (494), some of who would be on opposing teams in future matches, donated parts, tools, and assistance constructing a competition ready robot within a single day - a feat which the competition allows six weeks for.^[17]^[18]^[19]^[20]

Many teams also choose to collaborate during the build season. The degree of collaboration can range from sharing part designs to each team building exactly the 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.

Typical schedule

File:FRC20anivlogo.png

2011 marked the 20th FRC season

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.^[21] 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.^[22]

During the build season, the six weeks following the kickoff, the teams begin to design a robot that is able to play the game, essentially from scratch. Team members typically 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 software development. After the build season has ended (usually the 3rd full week of February), teams must stop work on their robot before transporting it to the location of their first competition.^[23] This date is typically referred to as "ship date," as past competitions required the shipment of the robot to the first competition on this date. However, competitions are increasingly "bag and tag," where robots are sealed in a bag prior to competitions, and transported at the team's expense. Although the term "bag and tag date" has been proposed, "ship date" is still far more commonly used. Competitions for FIRST consist of dozens of regional competitions and one championship event.

The Championship event is held every year in April, and brings together the world championship competitions for FRC, FTC, and FLL.^[24] For FRC, the championship event consists of four divisions of 85–95 teams competing on one of four fields: Galileo, Newton, Archimedes and Curie.^[25] 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.

Teams

The FIRST Robotics Competition is most prominent in the United States, where FIRST was originally founded, though teams from Canada have been disproportionately successful. FIRST urges teams and sponsors to expand the reach of FRC by helping start new FIRST teams. International expansion has been most successful in North America where there are over 3,200 teams in the United States and over 250 in Canada (mostly in Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta). FIRST Robotics has reached across North America into Mexico, where over 50 teams have been founded and around the world reaching five continents.

Countries currently represented (in decreasing order of number of teams, as of 2014):^[26]

United States of America (3,200)
Canada (250)
Israel (75)
Mexico (50)
Australia (19)
Turkey (17)
China (17)
Brazil (12)
Chile (7)
Dominican Republic (2)
Netherlands (2)
United Kingdom (2)
Taiwan (1)
Singapore (1)
United Arab Emirates (1)

Concept and teams

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.^[27] Regional competitions take place around the United States as well as in Canada, Israel, and Mexico, but FIRST has a multinational following that further includes eleven other countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Brazil, and China.^[28]

Teams are expected to solicit individuals, sponsors, and businesses for support in the form of donations of time, money, or skills. The average team has approximately 25 students, but participation has ranged from 1 to 100.^[29]

Team organization

The average FRC team typically has approximately 25 students,^[29] but can range anywhere from 2 to 150. 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. 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.^[30]

Competitive events

Template:Image FRC events small Most FIRST regional events take place between Thursday and Saturday in a week in March.^[31] 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.^[32] 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.^[33] All three teams in an alliance that wins a regional earns a reserved spot at the championship event, which from 2011 until 2017, will be held in St. Louis, Missouri.^[34]^[35]^[36] Hall of Fame teams and Legacy teams—teams that competed in every FRC season from 1992—are automatically qualified for the Championships, regardless of regional statistics.

Tiers of competitive events

All events have the same tournament structure: qualification matches followed by elimination matches.

District events

In more densely populated regions, a different system of competition has been created that provides an extra level of competition within the region, known as a district event. District events are smaller than regional events and are held at much smaller venues, usually high school gymnasiums. A typical district event has an average of 30-40 teams. Winning a district event does not necessarily qualify a team for the FIRST Championship, but rather to the Region Championship. For 2009 through 2011, the US state of Michigan was the only region to hold district events. Beginning with 2012, a second "district region" was created, the Mid-Atlantic Region (MAR), comprising New Jersey, Delaware and eastern Pennsylvania.^[37] Beginning with the 2014 season, the New England and the Pacific Northwest regions started housing district events. Beginning in 2015, the state of Indiana will house the district model. Performance at district events earn teams points to qualify for their respective region championships, sometimes referred to as district championships.

Region Championship Events

Certain regions in the US, including the states of Michigan and Indiana the Mid-Atlantic Region, New England Region, Pacific Northwest Region, operate under the district system, and hold the region championships during week 7 of competition. The best-performing teams during the district events in each region qualify for the region championship, and a number of teams qualify for the World Championship, some based on winning or receiving awards, and others on the point system. 27 teams from Michigan (3 Winners, 3 Chairman's Award Winners, 1 Engineering Inspiration Award Winner, 1 Rookie All-Star Award Winner, and the next 19 highest ranked teams), 14 MAR teams (3 Winners, 2 Chairman's Award Winners, 2 Engineering Inspiration Award Winners, 1 Rookie All-Star Award Winner, and the next 6 highest ranked teams), 24 PNW teams (3 Winners, 2 Chairman's Award Winners, 2 Engineering Inspiration Winners, 1 Rookie All-Star Award Winner, and the next 15 highest ranked teams) qualify for the World Championship through their district systems.^[38]^[39]

Regional events

Regional events are not to be confused with Region Championship events. The region championship events involve the qualifying teams from the respective District events within their regions, which are in more densely populated areas.

Regionals typically involve between 30–65 teams, and regional events with more than 70 teams are usually split into two: for example, the Duluth^[40]^[41] and Seattle events have two regionals that share the same arena at the same time, and in Minneapolis, two regionals are held simultaneously in separate arenas.^[31]^[42]^[43] Teams that win a regional, as well as the winners of the Rookie All-Star, Engineering Inspiration, and Chairman's Awards automatically qualify for the FIRST Championship. There are many regionals across the world. They tend to last around 3 days.^[44]

Championship

The FIRST Championship is the culmination of the season's FIRST programs. The event includes the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) Championship, the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) World Championship, and the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) World Festival. Also featured is the Junior FIRST LEGO League (Jr.FLL) World Festival Expo.

Awards

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

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.^[45] 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. A team that wins a Championship Chairman's Award is inducted into the FIRST "Hall of Fame" and invited back to Championships every year regardless of their performance at regional or district events. 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 no more than 10,000 characters documenting the team's efforts at spreading the message of FIRST, a five-minute presentation to a panel of judges—followed by a five-minute Q&A session for the judges—and a three-minute video. New to the 2014 season, teams are allowed to present their Chairman's Award submission at all events they attend - regional or district - until they win^[46]

Woodie Flowers Award

The Woodie Flowers Award (WFA) 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. Each team may submit one mentor at one regional for the regional Woodie Flowers Award. At each regional, one regional WFA winner is selected. 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.

Dean's List Award

The Dean's List Award is given to individual student team members. Much like the Woodie Flowers Award for mentors, the Dean's List Award is to recognize students for their technical knowledge, leadership skills, and their ability to inspire their team toward the mission of FIRST. Teams are allowed to recognize 2 students on their team as Dean's List Semi-Finalists. As semi-finalists, these students are eligible to win the Dean's List Finalist Award at a regional. 2 Dean's List Finalist Awards are given out at every regional, and these student's names are announced at the State championship. At the annual FIRST World Championship, 10 finalists are then awarded the Dean's List Award during a special award ceremony.

The 2014 Dean's List Winners include: Kinney Anderson, Team 2486, CocoNuts, Flagstaff, Ariz.; Callie Carbajal, Team 1671, Buchanan Bird Brains, Clovis, Calif.; Bryce Croucher, Team 2471, Team Mean Machine, Camas, Wash.; Michael Foley, Team 1923, The MidKnight Inventors, Plainsboro, N.J.; Alec Kumpf, Team 1311, Kell Robotics, Marietta, Ga.; Alexander Lew, Team 1912, Team Combustion, Slidell, La.; Madeleine Logeais, Team 2177, The Robettes, Mendota Heights, Minn; Simran Parwani, Team 3504, Girls of Steel, Pittsburgh, Pa.; Camron Razdar, Team 27, Team RUSH, Clarkston, Mich.; Anthony Stuart, Team 4201, Vitruvian Bots, Hawthorne, Calif.^[47]

Kit of parts

At the start of the FIRST season all teams receive the Kit Of Parts and the game description. The kit includes the control system and a collection of parts to build a basic robot, as well as many parts donated by participating sponsors. Besides the control system, the kit includes items such as motors, structural components, speed controllers, pneumatic actuators, wheels, and gearboxes, as well as programming and design software. As soon as the teams receive their kit of parts, the 6-week build season begins.^[48] Teams are allowed to purchase additional off-the-shelf items where each individual item value may not exceed $400 USD with a total maximum project budget of $4,000.^[49]

Beginning in the 2013 Season, in partnership with AndyMark, FRC launched FIRST Choice, an online web store allowing for teams to purchase items using special FIRST Choice credits. The same number of credits are allotted to each team, and each item's credit value varies with real world price and availability. A catalog of hundreds of items is available to choose from, ranging from 0 to 400 credits each. In 2014, thanks to generous suppliers, FIRST Choice held a lottery to distribute hundreds of 3-D Printers, with the entry price into the lottery being all of a team's FIRST Choice Credits. 2014 also saw the inclusion of 3-D Printing Coupons available for multiple locations across the continental United States.

The main controller on FRC robots is a National Instruments RoboRio.

Media exposure

From 1996 to 1998, the FIRST Championship was covered by ESPN.^[50] Live coverage is currently provided by NASA TV, which can be viewed on the internet, TVRO, DirecTV, and Dish Network; the sophistication of the broadcast of each event is dependent on the organizers of that event, and range from professionally called with color commentary, such as the 2011 Michigan State Championship, to single-camera setups with no commentary other than the on-field play caller, which is typical of most events.

The PBS documentary "Gearing Up" followed four teams through the 2008 season.^[51]

In the television series Dean of Invention, Dean Kamen made appeals promoting FIRST prior to commercial breaks.^[52]

During the 2010 FIRST Robotics Competition season, FIRST team 3132, Thunder Down Under, was followed by a Macquarie University student film crew to document the first year of FRC in Australia. The crew produced a documentary film called I, Wombot.^[53]^[54] The film premiered during the 2011 Dungog Film Festival.^[55]^[56]

A book called The New Cool was written by Neal Bascomb about the story of Team 1717 from Goleta, California as they competed in the 2009 game season. A movie adaptation directed by Michael Bacall is being produced.^[57]

The CNN documentary "Don't Fail Me: Education in America", which aired on 15 May 2011, followed three FRC teams during the 2011 season. The documentary profiled one student from each team, covering different geographic and socioeconomic levels: Shaan Patel from Team 1403 Cougar Robotics, Maria Castro from Team 842 Falcon Robotics, and Brian Whited from Team 3675 Eagletrons.^[58]

On 14 August 2011, ABC aired a special on FIRST called "i.am FIRST: Science is Rock and Roll"^[59] that featured many famous musical artists such as The Black Eyed Peas and Willow Smith. will.i.am himself was the executive producer of the special. The program placed a special focus on the FIRST Robotics competition, even though it included segments on the FIRST Tech Challenge, FIRST Lego League, and Junior FIRST Lego League.

The movie 'Drive Like A Girl' followed the Bronx High School of Science's all girls robot team the Fe Maidens

For the 2013 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, five FRC teams and their robots led the parade, with one robot cutting the ribbon and the others shooting confetti.^[60]^[61]

In the 2014 movie Transformers: Age of Extinction, an FRC Robot built by Team 2468, Team Appreciate, for the 2012 Season was featured in Cade Yeager's garage shooting the foam basketball game pieces from Rebound Rumble.

Games

2015: Reigolith Returns
2014: Aerial Assist
2013: Ultimate Ascent
2012: Rebound Rumble
2011: Logomotion
2010: Breakaway
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

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