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What It Is |
FIRST is the international organization for youth that created FRC(FIRST Robotics Competition), FLL(FIRST Lego League), and FTC(FIRST Tech Challenge), to inspire young people to take an interest in science and technology.
FIRST FRC was founded in 1984 by entrepreneur and inventor Dean Kamen, and physicist MIT professor Woodie Flowers. There was only 28 teams in the first year and they all competed at only one event in a New Hampshire high school gymnasium. Since then, FRC has expanded to international reaches, with over 6000 teams world-wide, with teams in countries such as China and Israel. The challenges released every January help mold student minds to think critically and to work together to fight towards a goal. FIRST also creates many educational opportunities, as high school students, teachers, and manufacturing companies collaborate to reach a goal, bringing a whole community's ideas and knowledge together. Many scholarships are set up to assist aspiring students in the field of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) after graduating from FIRST robotics. The typical FRC game is set up so that the first 15 seconds of the game is when the competing robots are in autonomous mode. This means that for these 15 seconds, code that was written before-hand controls the robot to do a certain task, and human players cannot adjust anything. After this time, human players take up their controllers and have 2 minutes to complete the challenge that is given. Fields typically have a red and blue side, and three teams on each opposing side, which contend for the highest amount of points, depending on how the game is designed that year in particular. A new game and its rules are released about mid-January, every year. Following the release of the new game is a 6 week build period, where teams design, machine, build, and program a robot to solve the challenge that the game has given them. On the last day of this 6 week build period, robots are "bagged and tagged," to be prepared to be transported to the the team's first competition of the season. No one is allowed to touch it until it arrives at the competition. By competing in FRC, students strive for many things, but the ones teams are most awarded for include: Industrial safety, Gracious Professionalism, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Media and Technology Innovation, Excellence in Engineering, and being a finalist of a competition. This way, FRC redefines how students look at "winning." Teams can be win by being the most safe in the work place. Others can be appreciated for professionally working together or with others, on and off the playing field. Students are also rewarded for their creative solutions to a problem. Some are acknowledged for their use of social media and communications. This acknowledges that every team has their different strengths, and encourages everyone to thrive towards the positive goals we learn with FRC, in our own different ways, because there are more ways to win than simply gaining points. FIRST is much more than just robots. |