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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. "
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
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 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."
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!
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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.
Yup, my high school sent three teams to botball. We didn't do two well the first year; our two teams tied for last place. :\ But the second year, we got to go to Orlando where we took first place in the national competition. That was really fun.
If anyone is interested in the source code we used on our robot, it's under GPL -- just let me know and I'll send you a copy.
It's a great contest. Teams can compete on only $2000 sponsorship, and travel is paid for to go to the nationals if you suceed at the regionals.
Though I didn't realize they had switched to mindstorms. When I did it they were using Fred Martin's Handy Board and Interactive C.
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
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The kit which was supplied last year (for the 2000 contest) contained both the mindstorms RCX brick controller, as well as the Handy Board (with Interactive C). Thus many teams built two robots, each independantly controlled - it would have been nice if a radio transciever had been included so that the two robots could talk to each other...
The Handy Board is annoying though, it doesn't have a real time clock and the software timer isn't accurate at all - the speed of the software timer is proportional to the current provided by the battery.
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
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