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You seem to be comparing FLL with FRC. Here's a dose of reality. This does not include the money for the Bot itself, which can be up to 4000 dollars http://www.usfirst.org/robotic...

Came here looking for FIRST recommendations, and was not disappointed. However, I would recommend FTC instead of FRC; you learn just as much about robotics, the time pressure is much less, and the cost is lower. Start at http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/ftc/mentors and check out the Mentor Guide and the "Start a Team" link under Game & Season Info.

Either way, this is the time of the year when it's good for FIRST teams to bring on new members and start learning the basics of robotics, like OP desires. I think it's better for OP to learn while s?he teaches.

You should have at least given a link:
http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms

FIRST?

Having started involvement with FIRST over a decade ago, I would like to thank you for the OT advertising.

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/first-championship

All levels of FIRST (JrFLL, FLL, FTC and FRC) will be there. I'll have the pleasure of judging for the FLL World Festival again this year.

Admission is free--come and see if you're in the region /K

I'm a mentor for FIRST Team 4095 Team RoXI of Pius XI High School out of Milwaukee WI. It was our rookie year this year and we didn't do all that well, but we were there with more than a plywood box (but close though). I was also a student on FIRST team 13 of Johnsburg IL 1996 through 1998. FIRST is a great project for those interested in STEM and Business and Marketing students too. Our team was a team of 12 kids and 2 mentors. While most teams are double or triple the number of participants. When starting, most of our team didn't even know how to use a drill. After the very short and intense 6 week build season, they all have that figured out, and have better learned the engineering portion of the event. They also got into mathematics of projectile motion. All to build a robot that is 28"x38"x60"tall and max weight of 120lbs. The event changes every year, and the size constraints change a little bit every year. The other interesting thing with FIRST Robotics is the way they made the event more than just cheering on your own robot. You are teamed up with two other teams for the event. For this last year a game of 3 on 3 basketball. So teams cheer themselves on along with 2 other teams who earlier were opponents to them. There is a lot of opportunity to volunteer being a mentor to a local team as well or even sponsor a team. I know our team is looking for all types of mentors and sponsors, ME, EE, Machinists, CS, programming, Business, Marketing. If you're even a little bit interested check out http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/get-involved for more information. -Nate

I believe the Basic Stamp is being kept on life support by F.I.R.S.T. Robotics and if they ever truly open up the permitted hardware then yes, stamp is toast.

More schools need to have Robotics Teams. It's essentially making a competition out of science & engineering.

How about a whole team of heros. See http://www.usfirst.org/ While I do not like everything about the program, the students really do catch some of the excitement of science and engineering.

For all the tech geeks out there interested in volunteering there is a great program called First Lego League to help gets kids get excited about technology. The program uses the Lego NXT kit like in the video. Legos + robotics + getting kids excited about technology = win.

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/fll/content.aspx?id=13056

I don't know how much glamour you can put on an Academic Decathlon team, but Dean Kamen has had some success with making science and engineering seem a bit more fun with the FIRST Robotics competition. Some high school teams are actually bringing cheerleaders and cheering sections to the event, and there are starting to turn up more local events as well.

I attended the Microcontroller Monday classes at the local hackerspace, HacDC (http://hacdc.org/) where we worked from plans found on Lady Ada's sites (http://www.ladyada.net/make/usbtinyisp/ and http://www.adafruit.com/).

The other thing to do is get started with US FIRST Robotics (http://www.usfirst.org/) established by the inventor of the Segway, Dean Kamen to "inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership." according to the web site.

Perhaps you could try to contact him through FIRST? (it would be natural to involve them anyway)

Form a FIRST robotics team. One of their goals is to get a FIRST team in every high school.

My daughter is in 2nd grade and my wife coached her team in Junior First Lego League this year. The rules specify that you have to include simple machines and moving parts (using motors and human power). The kids did all the work on their own and they totally get it. They got to show off their creation at LegoLand California. I highly recommend this program for K-5 students.

I'd recommend taking a look at FIRST robotics. FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, they are an organization created to get young people interested in engineering related fields for schooling. definitely worth taking a look into. http://www.usfirst.org/

First Lego league. Smart is a completly different project I am working on.
My apologies.
http://www.usfirst.org/firstlegoleague/community/homepage.html

http://www.usfirst.org/

First Lego league. Smart is a completly different project I am working on.
My apologies.
http://www.usfirst.org/firstlegoleague/community/homepage.html

http://www.usfirst.org/

There is a First Lego League with particapation starting at 6 years old I think this might fit your bill. I've been hearing great things about it.

The URL is: http://www.usfirst.org/firstlegoleague/community/homepage.html

Good Luck

FIRST junior Lego league is designed for this age group, and though I haven't been involved at that age level, I know the middle school and high school programs are good, and the elementary school version looks age appropriate.

The FIRST organization is definitely an outstanding model of teaching kids what is is that programmers and engineers do in a way that is exciting and relevant to each age group. I highly recommend checking them out.

http://www.usfirst.org/firstlegoleague/community/jfll/welcome.html

FIRST robotics competition is a great way to educate and middle school and high school kids excited about programming, engineering, and robotics.
I'd recommend joining a group at a local school for a year or so before starting your own group, but there's plenty of opportunity out there.

>"Shameful behavior from institutions which really ought to be setting a better example."

Bah - that's nothing. Wait until the idea hits high school robot competitions...

Let's not forget he is also the founder of the FIRST Robotics competition. I'd say he's trying to change our world.

Not to mention his "invention" of a way to actually get students to want to go to school for what are commonly referred to as the STEM professions...

Hmm I'm involved with a FIRST robotics team at a local high school and I've seen rivets used on some quite advanced machines recently. I've even seen what happens when a persons hand ends up where the pieces of metal to be joined are supposed to be. Lets just say that I'll be quite careful not to repeat that mans mistake.

Theoretically that would work, but my oh my that would be complicated.

One real world example of essentially the same thing: FIRST Robotics wants to make sure that everyone has access to the game manual at the same time at the start of the build season without creating a massive load on their servers, and to make it available for those who don't have internet access where they watch the kickoff. They begin distributing an encrypted version of the manual a week in advance, then release the decryption key during the kickoff video.

It works fairly well, but this is a very special case where not releasing early is the primary concern. A cool idea, but I don't see it working (or helping) for updates, especially for small updates that may not be much larger than the key to begin with. It may be more effective for large updates (iPhone firmware updates, for example) where the download size can be prohibitive.

They are very kind, not aggressive and they don't bite.

The number of US students going into Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) careers dropped in the 1994-2004 period ( http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstract.php?rptno=GAO-06-114 ).

It's time to wake up and do something! Help pre-college kids have fun with technology - the USFIRST program has kids in Kindergarten-High School building things that move, from simple machines up through 25 kilo semi-autonomous robots. Team oriented so the kids learn more than just technology - teamwork, competition and professionalism to name a few. See http://www.usfirst.org/ for details.

If you want the real story of why math and science teaching in the USA is so bad, see this about the collapse of the exponentially growing PhD pyramid scheme starting in the 1970s:
"The Big Crunch"
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
and also more by the same author (Dr. David Goodstein) here:
"Scientific Elites and Scientific Illiterates"
http://www.scienceboard.net/community/perspectives .132.html
From that second link: "I would like to propose a different and more illuminating metaphor for science education. It is more like a mining and sorting operation, designed to cast aside most of the mass of common human debris, but at the same time to discover and rescue diamonds in the rough, that are capable of being cleaned and cut and polished into glittering gems, just like us, the existing scientists. It takes only a little reflection to see how much more this model accounts for than the pipeline does. It accounts for exponential growth, since it takes scientists to identify prospective scientists. It accounts for the very real problem that women and minorities are woefully underrepresented among scientists, because it is hard for us, white, male scientists to perceive that once they are cleaned, cut and polished they will look like us. It accounts for the fact that science education is for the most part a dreary business, a burden to student and teacher alike at all levels of American education, until the magic moment when a teacher recognizes a potential peer, at which point it becomes exhilarating and successful. Above all, it resolves the paradox of Scientific Elites and Scientific Illiterates. It explains why we have the best scientists and the most poorly educated students in the world. It is because our entire system of education is designed to produce precisely that result."

What good does it do to make teachers happy with their salaries if the system they work in is fundamentally broken for todays' needs? You can even have both happy teachers and happy students -- but does that mean kids are learning and growing in good ways? An example of this is when teachers become entertainers, essentially feeding students the intellectual equivalent of candy all day, but everyone is happy (at least as long as the party lasts). Now, this is very different from the "hard fun"
http://www.papert.org/articles/HardFun.html
John Holt, Seymour Papert, and others talk about (e.g. learning to play the piano well, or to build a complex robot like encouraged by Dean Kamen's FIRST programs http://www.usfirst.org/ ) and which children generally must choose for themselves to pursue if they are to get much out of it beyond misery.

Also, consider this Libertarian-oriented article on schooling:
"Enterprising Education: Doing Away with the Public School System"
http://www.mises.org/story/2216
"All the arguments in favor of a public provision of primary education prove to be unfounded and/or incorrect. The failure of the state to provide a high quality service to all (its explicit goal) has rendered public primary education illegitimate; and the immeasurable waste of resources and rejection of consumer desires has left public education borderline immoral. As well, if an educated citizenry is to be considered necessary for the operation of the republican government, then it is an inexcusable conflict of interest when elected officials are the ones in charge of providing that education. Furthermore, the argument of externalities and nonexcludability fails to buttress the case for socialist education. The only ethical, reasonable system for the provision of primary education is the fr

To back up the troll a bit, maybe he went to the FIRST website http://www.usfirst.org/ and just looked at the FIRST Lego League (FLL)information. The FLL group is for 9-14 year olds and actually does use the Lego Mindstorms system. However, the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is much more involved as the parent notes.

The program has been getting some new support. At BAE this year, one of the founders of YouTube and the CEO of Encyclopedia Britannica spoke about further promoting FIRST through their respecitve outlets. Rhode Island just passed state law requiring all high schools to have FIRST teams by 2009 (IIRC).

I spoke with Dean there, and while he recognizes the success of the FIRST program in expanding to over 2000 teams, he wants it to be truly exponential growth. I don't know if it's possible. It's so hard to explain to people what FIRST is: I've been unsuccessful at establishing rookie teams at both colleges I've gone to, even though the latter was at a massive engineering university. It's difficult to get people hooked if you can't get them to the competition, but once they see a competition they've got the bug.

Slashdotters, even if you think the entire concept of "robots plus high school students" DOES "equal hilarity", please just go check out a local competition. They're easy to find on FIRST's website. It's an amazing program, and provides absolutely unparalled experience (and scholarship money) to budding engineers.

Disclaimer: I'm an alumnus of and mentor to Team 1073.

Science sure is interesting when shown to be. And, in case you wanted to know, i'm a current high school student (at a Catholic school).
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In my middle school, a retired teacher came back to teach an extra science course before regular classes started. He taught us all kinds of things, all hands on. We soldered together electronic kits, dissected animals (including a shark one of his friends caught... who needs preservatives), fermented wine from raisins, distilled it into alcohol, then burned it, made a barometer by pouring mercury into tubing, showed that there is a limit to how high you can lift water through suction by running a really long straw to the roof and having us try, exploding hydrogen balloons, and more...

Much of this wasn't exactly "safe", but that's what made it exciting. We all missed a bit of sleep in the morning, but loved it. Mr Zucca, you will always have a place in my heart.
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In either 7th or 8th grade (or both, I can't remember if one was outside of class time or not), one entire trimester of science was dedicated to doing a science fair project. Both of mine were on coilguns. Although I got a lot (and I do mean a lot) of assistance from my father that most kids wouldn't get, I can say that I learned a lot about electricity and magnetism. Winning 1st at county and 3ed at the regional science fairs wasn't bad either.
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Skip forward a few grades to my current junior year, in which my school entered the FIRST Robotics Competition for the first time. In this competition I learned way more about the disciplines involved in building a robot than I could have otherwise. Mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, building a drivetrain, pneumatics, sensors, control systems, just everything. Teamwork, planning, meeting deadlines, working with your allies, strategising, and emergency last minute repairs are all part of this competition. And as the team's programmer, I got my introduction to writing code for embedded systems, a field I may end up pursuing.

We all had a blast designing and building our robot during the six weeks from the kickoff to the ship date. Not much else would keep us at school until eight or nine at night while learning the whole time. Seeing this thread has made me realize what FIRST is really about; Dean Kamen's (the founder's) speeches now make sense. It's about getting us interested in science and technology, and that's exactly what it does. If you happen to be in a position where you could support this organization, whether you work in a high school (or even middle school... look into the FIRST Lego or VEX challenges), a company that can provide parts or sponsor a team with the support of engineers, or hold a public office, I would strongly advise you to look into this great organization.

And in case you are wondering, I'm on the FIRST Robotics Competition team 2144 from Sacred Heart in Atherton, CA. Our RadBot ended up being the highest seeded robot built by a rookie team in the Silicion Valley Regional, coming in at 11th out of 48 attending teams. We even got to be one of the 8 teams to pick our alliance members going into the finals. Victory in our first quarter final against the number one seeded alliance, when Woodside (team 100) fell over, was one of the greatest rushes in our lives. They came back strong and won the next two matches (moving on to the semifinals), but this competition was easily the most exciting thing I've ever done.
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So back on topic, student involvement is the only way to way to keep kids interested in subjects. Simply having books just doesn't cut it. And as much as I loved the Oregon Trail in elementary school, more games isn't the way to go. Hands on activities and larger projects are. In some subjects (sciences especially), this is relatively easy. In others (such as history or math) it's harder, but still doable. Small things like trying to make a hypercube out of pasta and marshmallows can make all the difference.

I think you're students will become extremelly enthusiastic towards robotics if they get involved in a program like FIRST robotics. Check out regional event this year and talk to some of the students, a huge majority of them will tell you that because of FIRST they intend to persue a carrer in engineering.
Check what people are working on at chiefdelphi, the environment there is very much like what the students are like at their schools. They ask questions, chat with each other, have fun, and mentors offer guidance for some of the tougher problems.

There are some robotics groups out there already. FIRST http://usfirst.org/ Robotics has been around for years. However, the cost is a bit steep, so a sponsor is needed. The team I work with was able to get a sponsor after one year of searching. The robots are pretty simple, you are handed a kit for electronics, and a base chassis, from there, you can add on accelleromters, gyroscopes, cameras, and other sensors to make things more complicated. Everything is custom made, so it is a great way to learn how to engineer things.

The coolest thing I was ever involved with was first robotics. It is an international competition between highschools. Each high school builds a robot that competes against other schools. The thing is, you don't know what the robot's job is until 8 weeks before the competition so time is scarce in making everything work.

First Robotics

I was a mentor for the programming part. It's pretty intense for the kids, as they need to learn a new language (c++) as well as program the thing.

This teams highlights video give a pretty good idea of what it's like here

...four robots over 4 years while in high school for the FIRST Robotics Competition. The first two years they were completely human controlled, the next to (and every year sense) there has been a time period of automation before human control takes over.

If you want to help geeky students, ask at your local High School(s) if they have a FIRST robotics team: they always need more money and mentors.

F.I.R.S.T. did it for me. :-) http://www.usfirst.org/

If You're looking for some more cool lego robots, check out first lego league. http://www.usfirst.org/jrobtcs/flego.htm

On the subject of cool consumer robotics products, the VEX kits from radio shack are pretty cool.

Or, if you're into some really beefy robots and are willing to put out a couple thousand dollars, check out innovation FIRST's robotics website http://www.ifirobotics.com/. I'm a FIRST robotics mentor, and we use IFI's parts to build some pretty beefy robots in the 130 lbs range, im sure it could easily be adapted to anything you're looking for though, as long as you're using 12v motors.

I learned VB when i was 8. I finished my first C++ DirectDraw-based program at 14. I'm working on a program for a microcontroller that i'm designing to transmit data over the X-band. I know four other people my age on this level. Now, i learned all of this on my own, due to the total lack of avaliable programming classes, save a simple Java class that didn't seem worth my time. The computer classes offered at my school are pretty terrible, the most advanced of which involves learning how to write HTML in notepad. Everything else seems to be a typing class. I recently spoke to a classmate of mine who showed interest in video game design, and here's an exact quote from him: "Oh, i'll learn all that stuff later. That is what college is for." Of course he isn't the brightest pencil in the case, but he represents the general mindset. Now, don't loose hope, there are WONDERFUL after-school programs that i used to keep my sanity in meatspace which are churning out electrical engineers and programmers by the hundreds. The one problem seems to be getting more than six interested people people on your team. Just advertise programming courses on MySpace. You'll have more programmers than there are computers.

Well, the kids I work with certainly do, at least some of them.

Right now, I'm working with two kids that are capable of writing their own C code for use on PIC16 and PIC18 microcontrollers, optimizing routines to minimize memory footprint and excecution speed, and know the C language fairly well. They also understand basic algorithms and concepts like PID controllers, event loops, and interrupt routines. Yeah, most of the hardware and software tools are pretty advanced compared to what I had to work with at their age (in my case, spending my spare time with sector editors and assembly manuals defeating copy protection on Apple II games...), but I'm rather impressed with what they are able to do. They know how to do basic hardware hacking and soldering. Most importantly, they already know how to think like programmers.

Granted, I'm the programming mentor for a FIRST Robotics Team, so I'm only working with the kids that already have an interest in Robotics, but I'm generally impressed with what these students can do.

And, considering that every time I go to a competition there's usually half a basketball arena's seating worth of other kids that are interested in robots (each of which is interested in either the mechanical, electrical, or programming aspects of a robot), I'm actually not all that fearful for our future.

Drop out.

You don't need a degree to do incredible things.

Excessive schooling and socialization could be holding you back, at worst permanently infecting you with an inability to create and lead. A mind is a terrible thing to lose!

For a second, I thought that was an FRC kit bot.

It's a basic robot for the FIRST Robotics Competition, made from a kit from IFI Robotics. IFI also does the backstage work for the Vex robotics stuff. FRC kits are sorta like Vex except with beefier motors and on a larger scale. Too bad the sensors in FRC kits are pretty lame (e.g. the kit has hall effect sensors, but no nice shaft encoders).

Basically, it's some really useful stuff for fun little project bots, with a lot of components that are very similar to RC parts. It shares a lot of similar traits to the base chassis and components that we use for FIRST, the only differences being that VEX stuff is smaller and less powerful (The main battery we got with our kit is the same as the backup battery we have on our FIRST bot, which prvides just enough power to keep the controller running.) And whereas our FIRST robot uses motors pulled from a Fisher-Price minibike, the VEX bot we have uses servos and motors from Hitec.

From the kit we have, they improved the wheels and made the pieces a little more colorful. It didn't help us much with our bot construction, but it's a fun little thing to play around with, or to build smaller robots with.

Dean Kamen does not need his product to be used in "crossing america" by 2 idiots to advertise.

He had press coverage because his products helped millions of disabled and ill people.

http://www.usfirst.org/about/bio_dean.htm

IMHO he should also declare that Segway isn't meant to cross america of any sorts. It is a city "device" which even its advertisements showed people putting them to car baggage.

I'd blame his friends for very wrong publicity of product. Jeff Bezos is the first to blame. BTW, he also said "This thing isn't the thing I saw"

I know slashdot ran a story on what went wrong, but they are far from dead. There is the FIRST Lego Racing League, which is a robotics compeition for grade school kids across the country. (Which then evolves into higher level products as they advance into high school). Heck I know several kids whose got RIS2.0 sets for Christmas. The parents are tired of their kids only seeing computers as video game machines - these kits are an excellent segway between fun and programming. There are plenty of high school and college kids, even adults doing stuff with them too... for example Jin Sato there is an available C compiler, even a Real Time OS!

-everphilski-

The event is a lot of fun, both for the students as well as for the volunteers. FIRST regional and national competitions are largely run by a large army of volunteers, so they need lots of manpower to help with running the game and other things. Volunteers are also needed as mentors on teams, assisting the students with building the robots and teaching them various engineering and programming related tasks (plenty of opportunity for geeks to get involved ;-). Of course, they are also in need of financial donations, too.

I have to say, this is one of the most useful things I've seen on Slashdot in a while. For getting kids interested: my old middle school used to participate in a robotics league, which really got me interested in the whole idea of AI and computer programmming. There was too much demand: we could only send 16 people (8 per team) and every year 50 kids would show up. Let's get some schools to join...

As a student just starting his third week of engineering at Smartypants U. I have to report that i'm not having similar issues. While I do have one or two TA's are aren't competent at what they're doing they've been honestly trying their best. As for the actual professors I have two department heads teaching respectivly the intro physics and chem courses. Those professors are great. That being said I know this isn't the case everywhere. Money certaintly helps get better professors, fair or not that is the current situation. (financial aid however is also at very high levels from what I can tell)

Now the person I think who has hit upon this topic best is Dean Kamen the creator of the controversial segway. Whether or not your support his commercial endevours he's started one of the best programs to ever touch students. FIRST robotics (http://www.usfirst.org/) is a program that introduces to high school students (and through the lego league program middle schoolers) to what it is like to be an engineer. In his openning address to the competition's participants last year, he talked about how kids in the United States just want to hang out and in essence be lazy. After taking a tour through India however he saw droves of kids trying their hardest to learn everything they could, desperate for jobs that americans have begun to it seems believe are a birth right. Its an issue that his program that while becoming international he is hoping will help with these issues in the United States.

After being on a team for four years I learned almost everything that is involved in an engineering project. Given a strict deadline of six weeks to produce and ship a competition ready(heheh...) robot is just like reality, stressful, long nights(after school till 8 or later) and full of rewards. I've learned more than how to use machine shop tools, design parts in professional cad software, troubleshoot or write code for a robot. The program forces teams to fundraise and seek funding just like any real company. I've had to hold fundraisers, contact sponsors, cultivate relationships with companies and hunt down wealthy alumni for funds. The main goal of the program is to as the acro-name states, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, to inspire and foster a love for science and engineering. So my team also transformed itself into a PR machine(a vital part of companies in todays world) producing everything from corporate giveaways to hosting robotics expos in places as big as the world financial center in downtown manhattan.

Now I realize I sound like some brainwashed zealot, but ask any person who has participated and you will get a similarly positive response. After four years of participating I managed to wrangle a summer internship at an engineering firm actually doing engineering. Also now here at collge, while many students here can easily rival my abilities in a classroom, when it comes to what matters, making something and getting it out there in the public I'll have a huge upperhand. I know my dad, an engineer at a small company now looks for FIRST robotics experience on the resumes of new workers.

The educational instutions of today still offer education in the same way that they always have. FIRST offers people a chance to understand what engineering actually is about, creating things! The number of people that my team converted to engineering was sizable. The program is now relativly large at close to 1500 teams and I'm sure that within ten years the effects of it will be felt throughout the engineering world. Former FIRST robotics members will spread throughout the industry filling it innovation and a new life that is sorely needed.

~Ian
Proud Member of Team 694!

This sounds like one of the US FIRST competitions. Perhaps FIRST should pick up the project and end up giving a small pile of cash to the school that wins it...