Slashdot Mirror
U.S. First 2001 Competition Begins
Borodir writes: "Technically it's just FIRST now, but this is an awesome competition for high school students, in which they build robots that compete at a national level. Over the last couple of years, this competition has really been growing, they now have over 500 teams. The idea behind the competition is to encourage students to go into some form of engineering, the students even write their own code for their robots. "
Wait a minute, ...
http://www.usfirst.org/whatis.html is (c) 1996
Perhaps they need a competition for someone to write an 'include footer' for their site...
As a two-year veteran of FIRST, I can say it's a fun experience and interesting to watch. This year's contest doesn't seem that competitive though, it's a 4v0, so i don't get to destroy Texan robots... :(
No electronics, no software. You'd better be a mechanical engineer, welder, or machinist if you want to participate. All the interesting parts are handed to you in a little plastic box. Budding EEs will have to be content with relays and limit switches. At least that was the story when I competed 5 or 6 years ago.
Ryan
I agree, maybe we could get the audience to join in along with it...
-- Hob - Java Spectrum Emulator
The only problem with the FIRST competition is that they force each team to purchase a kit from them. After buying their kit and any extra parts (from them of course) the robot alone ends up costing $15K. Add the cost for travel and other little things and it ends up costing $30K. This requires corporate sponsership which means that instead of building a robot and playing with cool stuff, you spend 90% of the time writing letters to companies.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
for those interested in that kind of things there is a large scale robotic competition (with fully autonomous robots). Engineers schools and universities are the competitors, and it's mainly based in europe, but the world finals include MIT and some japan schools i think. The only site i know of is there (little english flag top left of the page) : http://anstj.mime.univ-paris8.fr/~robot/concours/2 000/coupe/france/
When I did FIRST in high school, we got almost no support from the school, financial or otherwise. Our teacher spent enormous amounts of his own money on it. We were partnered with a local (15 miles) university, and because we didn't have and weren't given the resources at the high school, most of the construction work was done at the university. This made it very difficult for those of us still in high school to participate heavily; Quite a few couldn't drive, and those who did have a license weren't always able to get their hands on a car from their parents. In addition, the university made it an actual class, so they had dedicated time in their schedule; For me it was an "extracurricular."
As a result, I felt like an outsider no matter how much time I put into it. I never felt like a part of the team doing the project.
As it turned out, the college students & our teacher did most of the work in design & construction. We got little say in what went on. When it came time to decide who would drive the thing, it came down to myself and one other person (because very few other people would committ to making the weekend trip to New Hampshire); The college students were given the decision, and they picked him over me because they'd seen him more. Well, gee, sorry guys, I had things outside this project to do. I held off on getting a part-time after school/weekend job (which I needed, to cover the costs of recently getting my driver's license) for this project, apparently that wasn't enough.
When it came time to go to the competition (there was only one event at the time, not the regional/national thing like now), very few people from my school went, again because of lack of support from the school; They counted it as an absence against me, and there was no assistance in paying for hotel rooms. Even worse, only a couple of the college students went, and they're the ones who knew everything about the robot because they were given free reign (as explained above).
A few years later, my brother got involved with FIRST at the same school. By then they'd gotten a corporate sponsor instead, the high schoolers were put in the driver's seat, and I think everyone was much more interested because they were able to actually do something.
I participated in US FIRST/FIRST my Junior and SEnior years in High School and must say that it is an absolute great competition. (Not to mention getting out of school to go practice driving the robot)
--"Karma is justice without the satisfaction"
The team I led last year will not be competing again even though we came third becuase of political squabling between the two schools that worked together and lazy teachers. This is a project I'm willing to give 20 hours a week for 8 weeks and it will not go ahead because some teacher does not want to give 6 hours a week. I'm hoping to get it going next year but it looks doubtful.
The conclusion to this rant is that CanadaFIRST exists, it is a lot of fun and lots can be learned (even if there is no CS or even EE stuff mechanics is fun and working in a group with a challenge like that is very rewarding and educational to say the least), politics and laziness will be getting in the way of 15+ students for enjoying this.
Little do we expect, when we acquire the application package it tells us that we need to hand the Canada FIRST people 5000 dollars just so we can compete in the contest!! It turned out that this entrance fee is used to buy the materials and parts the organization provides us, and our team did not pay for it the previous year because it was waived as the "first time entry deal"! The news was such a shock to us; it had already been almost half of the school year, where were we going to fundraise 5 grand in 2, 3 months? The school obviously was not going to give us any money(it was a huge school), and there were no disgustingly wealthy kids in the club that could spit out that kind of money.
Furthermore, the so-call standardized parts the organization provides consist of such things as 3 regular, dc powered motors, a rc control kit (including a modem) more or less a generation older, and the 2, 3 batteries they provide so that we have a standard power supply. Everything else such as wheels, wires, gears or other materials were not provided at all which means we had to go out and buy those things ourselves. All the parts provided add together would hardly cost over 1000 dollars in my opinion, consider there were no custom made components or anything like that. The robots were to be remote controlled, therefore there were no programming or any sort of logic or microprocessors involved. So where does all that money go? Afterall this organization that's responsible for the event is non-profit?
After contacting some of the other schools in the region, we reached to the same conclusion. Everyone we contacted were obviously having problems with this, and no one could explain to us why such a astronomical fee was required for entrance. Needless to say when the deadline came we did not have enough money to enter, and we all came to the conclusion that this whole competition is a scam. A look at their website at http://www.canadafirst.org confirms at least the very business-like attitude of the organization; very rich sponsorship for the competition, the selling slogans of "turning technology into sports". Despite what the page says, the nature of the competition seems much less about science and technology and more about business and sponsorship and "the use of World Wide Web"??? The two testimonials(seem like a lose-weight ad) are nothing about the actual competition but about the use of WWW and another contest called the Science Wave.
sure I'll have a sig.
I don't know if its just a western States event but My nephew participated in www.botball.com. He ended up competing nationally in Austin, Texas this year.
Everyone is giving the same kits but they are built out of legos with the Mindstorm modules for programming. I was really impressed at that amount of detail that has to go into these robots! You compete against another team on a playing field thats about the size of a ping pong table. You have a raised field in the center where you and your opponents ping pong balls are located. There is also a tray at the center of the table. When the light goes on one of your two robots trys to capture the tray and your second robot has to position itself to grab all of its ping pong balls from the raised playing field. (your robots had to fit in a virtual box before starting so usually to get the balls you have to riase the robot). Then you need to get your robot on the tray that hopefully your other robot captured.
I don't think the cost of entry is anywhere near 15K either.. I will ask my brother if any costs came out of the students pockets, but I don't think so.
But this competition is remote controlled. Check it out. Wireless controls, wired controls, joysticks, etc.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Awww yeah, new rules are up, and there is a team meeting today at 3:00. For the next 6 weeks school, work, and our social lives get put on hold while we design, build, and (hopefully) test our machine. At the same time we need to be making a 3d animation, raising money, trying to market our team, etc. This competition isn't just about building a robot, for our team its about running a business. And this year, our business is gonna make a robot to rock all of you!
I think that, originally, FIRST had good goals - trying to get high school students excited about engineering/science/tech the same way they get excited about sports. So they provided an arena for friendly competition, and an atmosphere that would appeal to tournament style play. For those that haven't been, there are like 10K kids running around, loud music pumping, several rounds going on at a time, so there is a tournament like atmosphere.
But corporations have taken over FIRST just like they've taken over everything else. The finals are on ESPN, so they invest gobs of money/effort into the projects. I think the worst part is that, you look around the pit area, and you see adults hovered around the robot, and the kids that are supposed to be learning and getting involved are off screwing around in Disney World!
Even worse, it seems the corporations pay the kids to be loud and obnoxious and show of the company logo. One group I remember from Chicago marched around the area yelling, screaming, waving Motorola flags and chanting "Team Motorola!" Another group passed out flyers to everyone in the stands that said "Check out the FIRST finals at your local GM dealer." And I think FIRST likes the money its generating, so they're not gonna put a stop to it. I just thought it was sad how the kids were getting used.
When I was at the Univ. of Iowa, I helped the local high school do FIRST for the first time. The students are given a $250 budget (which they're not supposed to exceed). So its a great engineering project - get a task done with a limited budget. And our kids got so much out of it! But they had no chance of actually being competative. How are we supposed to compete against JPL engineers, for cryin out loud? The motto we adopted was, "Early elimination = more time in Disney World."
I had a teacher who participated in this FIRST thing -- Evidentally it was a part of this big school-sponsored robotics program
I've heard a lot about this, I saw it in the newspaper, in the classroom, and now on Slashdot, but I think one of the flaws of the program is its inability to let people know exactly what the competition is -- I understand they are building these things blind?
Seeka
The process for competition works like this: one "hub" (local competition area) is given the task of making a game for the year. Then it's released at synchronized kick-off meetings to all teams. From that date, you've got 6 weeks until local competition. If you place in that (either by placing in the competition or the BEST award), you advance to state/nationals (it's still basically state because most of the hubs are in Texas, but some are as far away as Chicago).
For reference, I'm on the Medina Valley High School Robotics team. Click on MV Robotics at the top, and don't believe everything (anything) you read on the schools front page except for the part about the corn :)
Note: Kickoff for next year's competition is scheduled for early October I believe. I also apologize for our website - our school district gave us some real hassle about it so we never had a chance to truly refine it.
CAP THAT KARMA!
Moderators: -1, nested, oldest first!
SIG: HUP
Anyone have a mirror up for the docs? Our team(and probably other teams too) are having trouble downloading the docs from the crappy first server.
It's good to hear that high schoolers are doing something useful with their time other than sitting around and smoking pot and pulling fire alarms. I remember a few years ago when the only time students could compete on a nation-wide basis was with the designing of web pages for scholarships.
It appears everyone else on here had a bad experience. Well, I'm a senior in high school, and have participated in it since my school started it (My best friend was the one who brought it to the attention of our science teacher). It has been one of the most fun and entertaining experiences I have had! I completely forgot that it started until I read the article. I can't wait now. And Several other people were talking about no support from their school, etc. We get excellent support. Our new principal (er, was there last year too) is very excited about it and tries to get as much funding from the school district as can. We have massive teacher and student interest. The only reason we only have 30 students out of a student body of 1400 or so is because of the time involved. It is also generally very well accepted as far as the rest of the kids who aren't in goes, and no one really gives us the nerd treatment, plus many of the baseball and football players and many other "popular" students are in it. But the experience of getting to work in every phase of the design of the robot is fun, from brain storming to crafting our own parts out of steel and aluminum to programming the control unit. Its very eye opening to see the engineers struggle on it too!
So I don't know about these people who say it wasn't challenging, or it wasn't fun. If you think it wasn't challenging, then get off your high horse and admit it was. When you have professional engineers that work for Lockheed, Nasa, and 500 -person engineering firms have trouble, then you know its challenging. Either that or they stuck to they're programming, and didn't get involved with anything else, and well, who's fault is that?
That last paragraph will probably start a flame war, but hey, I'm just telling it like it is!
Blake
As a 4 year participant, I will agree that it does cost a nice sum of money to join, and go to many regionals. But costs can be kept down. Mnay teams do it on less than $20k, others spend over $100k but they host regionals, my team, 111 Wildstang spend a decent amount of money, and we do well because we have huge student participation.
Check it Out http://aarondavidson.com
The goal was to design a robot that would grab onto a 50 foot piece of string hanging from the Liberty Science Center's upper ceiling, carry a payload of an egg to the top, and be first to get the egg safely to the bottom without cracking it (while still being the first team to do it).
Most teams had set up advanced ways of carrying the egg both up the string and down, so they simply had to roll the egg out when they made it down. This was safe but incredibly slow.
My team's solution was to use tiny egg parachutes, and carry our 3 egg payload (we were supposed to do 3 all together) all at once. What a revolutionary concept!
Except, when we launched the device, it proceeded to go up the string, and launch the eggs out several feet from the landing area, be carried by the air coming out of the air conditioning ducts, and land on several exhibits on multiple floors of the building. The curators of the museum were not pleased.
Needless to say, we didn't win. But we had the biggest laughs when other people were awarded prizes and trophies.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
As a reporter for my school's newspaper, I've done a couple of articles on our FIRST team. Here's a mind dump of everything I can think of:
What's this Submit thingy do?
I agree...I talked to a couple team members (and my girlfriend, who happens to be on another team...could get ugly :)), and they are all very disappointed. Cheering is going to suck because all you can do is scream the positive "Go! Get those balls in the weird lookin tube thing!", instead of hoping the robot opposite you is going to tip as they speed up the ramp. I wish they would drop the coopetition stuff and go back to how it was a few years ago, where it's every robot for themselves.
I have done the FIRST robotics competition for 2 years, and before i join my team i was going to be a vet. once i was done with my two year stint in the competition i am now on my way to get my engineering degree at cal poly pomona. the one thing that the students of thew competition need is money, they don't have time to make a lot of mistakes but they do and it costs a lot to do so. so if you have a spare time or money go down to your local high school and help them out in anyway you can...and as a side note i am going to go back to my high school and teach engineering. :)
Just as in everything else, now it's US First. Egocentric Americans. :)
Wah!
"http://www.canadafirst.org" Just FYI. I'm co-leading my school's team this year (western canada high, Calgary, Alberta)
This year there's 27 teams competing, so it's on a decidedly smaller scale. This seems to have benefits, however. We are by no means corporatized. No, really. In fact we need more sponsors. We need another $10K before February or else we have to fly the team down out of our own pockets. And forget about fancy metal work, this baby's gonna be made from wood; anything conducts if you try hard enough.
Anyhoo, this year's 'robotic sport' for Canada First is the robotic biathlon; not quite, but almost, as dumb as it sounds. The events are going to be held in TO on march 1-3, and if we're luckily the Discovery Channel we'll cover us again.
I find this interesting, as I saw things moving in that direction over the two years I participated.
:)
When I first participated in '98, everyone was involved. The team was basically a joint effort between the engineers and the students. This works especially well when you have young engineers (recently out of college). Everyone felt a sense of pride in the project, and felt like they were part of it. It also took lots of time, as I basically spend every evening and saturday for 6 weeks down there in the workshop. I mainly worked on the code, but I also helped with the rest as needed. I even got to be one of the driver/operator people that year, which was pretty cool.
In the '99 competition, however, things changed. It seemed like the engineers (mostly the same ppl) decided to cut the students out of the loop. We were given a sense of participation in the begining, but it degraded over time. We only met a few days a week. The engineers tried to do most of it themselves, and seemed to procrastinate about it. I still worked on the code, so I was involved. However, most of the students (a mostly new group) didn't seem involved at all. I felt a lot of bitterness between myself and the engineers that year. The students were generally less self-motivated, which could have partially led to it, but the lack of veterans kept most of them from noticing it.
Canada FIRST, the canadian assosiate of US First will have shooting in this year's competition. This year involves a biathlon where first the robots must navigate a course to arrive at a shooting range with targets. No real bullets though, just squash balls.
Yes, but the default program on the robot end of the control system needs to be changed a lot to be useful for most robots. Making it autonomous would be too much for most high schools.
Aaron Plattner
It is true that Canada FIRST will cost alot to attend (this year 8000 to enter +1000 for parts + travel (21000 for our team this year :0 )) but it is an excellent experiance.
The money is mainly used to transport and renting locations as far as i know. As well, the top 8 teams get to put their robots on display at various science centers (including the possibility of a international convention in Korea this year :). Canada FIRST helps to subsidise these costs (not sure if they get the money from private sponsors or the 8000 though :| ).
Actualy, in last year's Canada FIRST robotics competetion, the 2 teams from our province (state), Newfoudnland, came in 1st and 6th place despite engineers from top firms such as Bombardier and Spar Aerospace sponsering and helping other teams. Just goes to show that anybody can make a killer robot if they put enough time and effort into it.
Yeah. IMO, that really needs to change. Teams with student-designed and student-built robots really spoke out last year, and I think that if more teams proclaim the fact that their robots were designed and built by students, we shouldn't really need regulation. Although, there will always be teams with company-built robots, but hopefully they'll become a minority.
Aaron Plattner
And it's the biggest medal I've ever seen! Lots of pennies in those things...
Again, you said this year it takes 8000 dollars to enter. Where does this money go to? Renting the place? I hardly think that's an issue considering there are so many alternative such as high school assembly halls, gyms or such would cost so little if nothing. As for the staff, how many staff do you need for such a competition? I would bet a lot of engineering professionals in the community would even do it for free, just to encourage the young people and making a good cause. (I know the people where I worked in the summer certainly would) It's this unexplained spent of the fees that made us come to the conclusion that this is in fact a big scam, and not worth of wasting our effort to. I suspect that also how some of the other teams that I spoke to feel.
(Actually me and my buddy were thinking of creating our own competition across Ontario(where I live), with a fixed budget(not 21000 or 8000!!) and some simple standardize components such as the RCX from MindStorm or perhaps some surplus materials. Does anyone think this is feasible or have some idea to contribute?)
sure I'll have a sig.
This page states in small print at the bottom that "The national and regional competitions are produced by Motivate Canada (1994) Inc., a national non-profit organization."
It would be interesting to do a freedom-of-information request and get their financial details. How much they pay their president and staff, etc etc. Not all "non-profit organizations" are created equal.(*) Some do a very good job paying their principal employees (often founders of the organization), satisfying the minimum federal requirements for non-profit status, and that's about it.
The fact that this is in such small print and almost barely mentioned, that the 'people' and the 'who' is behind it is not so clear on the website, leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth.
I wouldn't want to be involved. I wouldn't want the company I work for involved.
And their website is good, but it's not impeccable. It's got a "splash page" whose entry-hyperlinks are almost un-noticeable. I ended up doing a google search and then finding a link into the pages from there. It was only after I went back out to the splash page and HUNTED that I found the parts of the image that were clickable.
(*) - Now there is a good social studies / law class / school newspaper project. An investigative report on this non-profit organization. An expose. Heck, even verifying that they *are* an officially listed non-profit organization.
I'm not really sure I agree with that. Admitedly, forcing them to completely re-engineer the parts they are given and come up with a new design in the alloted time is unrealistic. But if a team is allowed to start completely from scratch? No kits, no pre-fab parts? Just a machine shop and Radio Shack, breadboard their designs and do away with most of the size/weight restrictions(within reason). I bet we'd see some great innovation. Perhaps walking robots instead of the old theme of the triangular base and extendible pincer. I'd rather see the robot kit done away with and the money and energy put into a robotic design software package to allow people to try a lot of _new_ designs before they head down to the machine shop.
When I first heard of this program and I heard that students could design their own robots, I imagined spider-legged robots with either vacuum based tubes for the years when they use balls, or conveyor belts for the years when they use innertubes, that would do away with the need for tactile sensors and the tricky programming needed to maintain just the right amount of pressure and simplify that aspect of the robot's design. This would allow for more and more creative ways of handling the mobility and terrain sensing issues. Some kind of laser sensor like a barcode reader for direction and proximity alert. Maybe even a form of sonar.
We need to stop crippling the next generation's imaginations. Do away with all these kits and pre-fab solutions. Teach them the principles of mechanical and electronic engineering and don't teach them any design methodologies beyond the basics. We'd probably be amazed at how advanced their solutions would be.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
The kits are really not pre-fab robots, and the size and weight restrictions are there more to make the competition fair and prevent people from pouring money and/or power into their robots than they are to restrict students. Even though the kits contain all the same parts, they're mostly things like motors, wheels, and wire that any robot is going to need anyway. Very little re-engineering is required. If it were entirely up to the students to make the robots, most teams would come to the competition with duct-tape-and-string robots while others would have things that looked like NASA projects (the good ones, not the ones that spontaneously died).
Aaron Plattner
(FIRST veteran) You have to power this thing with *only* the wiring given you in the Kit of Parts - this makes for some interesting power budgets - you can't just plug-n-play what they give you. Also, the box and controls ARE configurable - the plastic box is made for them by Raytheon, and it IS programmable. Course, it doesn't run *NIX, so some in this millieu will find it beneath them, but you can't just wire switches to the radio net and make it go.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
It promotes the design of robust solutions to a unique problem, and in the past few years has stressed cooperation between teams - distancing itself even further from Battlebots etc - which also have their place.
I've seen more kids head towards sci/tech from this program than any other single program in 21 years of sci/tech education. The professional engineers, to a person, say this program is the thing that reminds them why they got into engineering in the first place. A fresh challenge and 6 weeks to go is the antidote for too many engineering jobs - twiddling the last 1% performance per year out of whatever thing you're working on.
Plus, someone asked me what the regional competition was like after we returned. I told them that it was the first time in 17 years of teaching that I had to sit down and put my head between my knees because I was about to pass out watching my students do something academic. And I'm the most laid-back guy on the staff.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Oops, I guess you're not an engineer. This program is not designed to create new researchers in the robotics areana, but to inspire students to enter the engineering field. Deadlines, the use of existing materials and technology, and restrictions on what can be done is at the heart of engineering. We, engineers, seek practical solutions to problems using actual parts. Yes it would be great if we could get high school students to invent the next generation technology but we have to remember what the goal of the program is: to inspire the next generation of engineers. If you would simply donate your time to inspire the next generation you would discover that the challenge is great. Tell me how you create interest in creation of new technology with the next generation, otherwise blah, blah blah.
Oops, I guess you're not a creative engineer. My point was to give them access to resources which would allow them to break the model of "whoever studies what the previous winning teams did and improves on it the most wins" into "whoever designs the best robot, original or not, wins." But since you chose to ignore my main point and started the whole thing with a personal attack, you can just FOAD.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
I understand that they're not pre-fab robots. But I've read a fair bit of the material and looked at the results of the competition. The robots are all pretty much variations on the theme. A heavy base with an extendible arm and using a pincer to manipulate objects.
I agree with the point about motors and wires. But I question the inclusion of wheels in the kit. I think encouraging creativity is more important than solving the problem. Sure the most creative robot might not win, but it starts a thought process in tangent to normal thought and THAT might be the next great advance in robotics. A longer time to build and a simulator program to test a great many designs would foster more creativity. The wide variety of robots created for more free-form competitions speak for themselves. I just wish they could get the kind of mindshare that FIRST does.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
I live in Dallas Texas. I was the team leader at our high school in the '97 competition. The robot is now parked in my garage, sans thousand dollar remote control. We rigged up some controls on a tether, and it wouldn't take much imagination to make it remote controlled again. This was the "Toroid Terror" year, so the 'bot has a claw on an extension pole, extends to be about ten feet high, collapses to be about three feet high. Ours was the "General Lee, team 183". Decorations and plexi-panels are all still there, looks great except for the dust. The best offer will be accepted. Email cknox at tamu dot edu if interested.
Austin is more fun than Dallas.