Slashdot Mirror
FIRST Robot Competition Wraps Up
CritterNYC writes: "CNN is carrying a brief article on the FIRST Robotics Competition in Florida (as originally reported on Slashdot here). This is the competition that Dean Kamen (Ginger inventor, etc) organized. Couple of interesting pics." Any FIRST participants out there who can link to pages describing their schools' projects? If anyone from CNN is reading, it would be great if you had some higher-res shots, too :)
and my brother's team
I thought I would respond to a few of the excellent points other readers are making.
I think the FIRST program is an excellent one; it is a great idea to have students work together with mentors from industry and academia. It's a great experience for them, and it helps put the focus on science and engineering education, which is often quite lacking in pre-university levels.
That said, however, I think realistically speaking, it is incredibly hard to pull together the support to do this project at smaller and more rural schools which don't have major industries and universities nearby. In addition, many smaller schools may not be able to pull together a large enough team to compete. If we step aside and think "outside the box" for a moment, I think we can all agree that there are many ways to promote science and engineering. For instance, when I was in HS, I participated in the Physics Olympiad and a local bridge-breaking contest. Yet both of those leaved much to be desired (ie, very few students competed on the US Physics Olympiad Team). We can encourage math and science in alternate ways which do not rely on expensive equipment or corporate sponsorships, and can reach many more students in the process.
To respond to another reader, I agree we shouldn't be "pushing" kids into science and engineering. Nothing could be worse. However, I think we should be making an effort to reach ALL kids out there who do have a genuine interest in science and engineering. We all know of examples of just how a few brilliant individuals can make major contributions to a field, and it is shameful to think that in all likelihood, we may not even be aware of such individuals, who may chose to go into alternate career paths. It is our loss.
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
I read through the FIRST contest website. Definitely very interesting, and I think all the students and sponsors deserve a round of applause.
HOWEVER, if you look a little bit closer at preicsely where the teams are coming from, you will find that a disproportinate number come from schools in the immediate vicinity of high tech belts around major urband areas. (The San Francisco Bay Area appears to be the largest geographical segment). As such, this contest is quite similar to the long-running Wsstinghouse (now Intel) competition, where students in major urban areas working in collaboration with major researchers from academia and industry compete against kids who lack any support from sponsors, and whose only research tools are their local libraries and the web. While the FIRST website did not provide further demographics, I am quite willing to believe that its participants are similar to those of the Intel winners -- largely upper-middle-class to upper-class HS students from urban areas whose parents are college educated, often in the sciences.
What about the REST of the kids out there?
I think we should give serious thought as to what we are doing to encourage the REST of the kids out there to pursue math, science, and engineering careers. FIRST and Intel are great ideas, but I for one am skpetical that we are really targeting the students who need our attention the most -- those with genuine ability and inclination to pursue math and science, but who lack the support to make it to the FIRST competition in Florida, or who lack a sponsor to help them win Intel. I think many of us in science and engineering can point to a small number of folks who have had a major influence in supporting our careers; without that support, many of us would not be here today. The fact that we are turning our backs on large numbers of students with both the ability and the inclination to pursue science and engineering is a deeply disturbing notion that should give anyone pause.
The web is the universal medium of our age, which has broken down many geographical and class barriers. Can't we use it to reach the rest of the kids out there?
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
I agree entirely. At my high school, the Junior Engineering and Technical Society (JETS) started competing in FIRST during my senior year, when I was preparing for International Baccalaureate exams. I would have really enjoyed this, and I know those who actually found the time got a lot of great experience from it.
This year, the team from my high school was aided by engineers from the University of Florida College of Engineering, NASA, and various companies. The members learned problem solving skills and people skills that can't be learned in standard classes.
By the way, I went to part of the competition this year to support this year's team from my high school. (They did pretty well until the last day.) It was amazing - literally thousands of people cheering for the teams. It's great to see people be so enthusiastic about engineering.
To my understanding, the point of FIRST has not been to monetarily fund the increase in science interest in education nationwide. Rather, the goal has been to get more kids thinking about science the way the majority of them now think about sports.
Dean's position has been that he wants science and engineering to get as much attention as major league sports, that he wants scientists and engineers to be heros and role models to children. If this were to happen, instead of all the kids being out on the basketball court working on their jump shot in the vain hope that they could make it to the NBA, they would be at home working on their homework in the more realistic hope that they could someday invent something of real value.
bun-fhuinneog agam!
A typical FIRST team costs about $40,000 (most donated by companies) and provides a wonderful experience for about 10-30 students (depending on the school.)
For $40,000, robotics contests like MIT's 6.270 or 6.186 can provide an experience for about 200 students. FIRST's large robots eat up money at an astonishing rate.
I'm not saying FIRST should be done away with-- it gets businesses involved in education, but before people get too carried away-- keep in mind the gigantic cost of FIRST.
-Ed
Beatty Machine Corp is a large national company? They were the national champions this year and frankly, before I did FIRST I'd never heard of them. They also happen to be the only repeating national champion FIRST has ever had. And contrary to what you said, students do work on the robots for the winning teams. This is a complaint that's leveled at many of the more prosperous teams without any real truth behind it. The reason most of these teams have better robots and more funding is because of the level of support at the lower levels. It's suprising to find out that the teams that have the most money actually don't get that from corporate. Instead, mid-level managers agree to "eat" the costs associated with the program. The reason they'll do that? Because they're engineers are so supportive of FIRST that they convince their boss to put the money in. I've also seen teams that have lots of money who can do almost nothing. It's not money nor will it ever be.
Matt Leese
Team Leader
Team 73
The control system used is built by InnovationFIRST. It consists of three Basic Stamp 2X controllers where one is user programmable. These are remote controlled robots but sensor input can be taken from the robot and used to preform certain tasks (for instance, several robots could "autobalance" on this year's bridge).
For more information on FIRST, the following websites might be of interest.
Matt Leese
Team Leader
Team 73
I'm a College Student Mentor for a FIRST Team based out of RIT. My team page can be found here
I just wanted to comment on some of the posts. This is not a battlebots clone. Far from it. The goal is not to disable/destory the other team, and although the game itself changes from season to season, it has been trending towards a cooperative effort.
The messages and encouraged behavior while somewhat idealistic are exatly what today's highschool students need. If anything, (refering to some other posts i skimmed) it will prevent violent behavior by providing kids with afterschool activities. I encourage everyone looking for a way to fill free time to check out www.usfirst.org
I can say personally that FIRST ( this being my first year ) was a great experience and very personally rewarding to feel as if you are making a difference in others' lives.
I think these sorts of competitions are exciting and very educational for the students, I strongl support them. When I was a high school student in B.C. Canada we participated in the Physics Olympics held at University of British Columbia. We had prepared for months, building aparatus and solving problems in electronics. We really had no hope in winning, or so we thought, yet we walked away with the provincial championship that year. My involvement with the club and its teacher/sponsor have profoundly influenced my life and the educational choices I made. If we want to encourage interest in science we should make it fun.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
Domain Names for $13
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
just to be fair, I must present the other side of the coin...
blah blah blah broken homes blah drugs blah alcohol blah academic pressure blach blah commericialism blah blah lack of traditional values blach blach blah blah too many choices blah blah DOOM blah blah global capitalism blah geek profiling blah blah
In other news, ain't nothing change, ain't nothing strange.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
I always wished I had joined in it, never had time I guess. But I knew people in it, and like other extracuricular activities, they gained more from robotics than from any classes. This is what we need more of in K-12. It is the learning that one gains from activities such as this that stay with someone, not what they learned in some Health class. These are our future engineers, and hey, they may actually enjoy their jobs.
Sig!
For anyone not involved with FIRST, what are you waiting for? It's a ton of work but it is a seriously good cause and a lot of fun besides. FIRST nationals is a truly fun experience. If you ever get the chance to go, do it.
Our team webpage can be found at http://www.moerobotics.org. I was one of the drivers for our robot, called M.O.E. (Miracle of Engineering). We were in the Newton division, and although we had some bad luck early in the competition, we got picked by team 71, Hammond and went on to win our division and the whole competition.
:-)
My National Champion medal and my team jersey signed by Woody Flowers (National Advisor to first, and professor at MIT) is proudly displayed in my room.
If anyone from our alliance is reading, I'd like to thank them for a job well done, you deserve the National Championship.
The world needs more people like Dean Kamen, and the many engineers and parents who helped out our team.
You have a real talent for missing the point. I was responding to someone flippantly pointing out that closed source development can work. Of course it can work. There is no cause for surprise and that's what i was objecting to. The second point I was trying to make was that the open source model offers a special set of advantages for future generations of a given technology which closed source does not.
However, both the original poster and I were referring to the differences in the open vs. closed source models and the results in the development of robots. If you feel that my social or moral evaluation of the differences is wanting, that's because I offered none. If that's what you're looking for, how's this: The closed source model rewards the best teams by giving them shiny prizes for their robots. That's great. The open source model rewards *all* participating teams by giving all of the participants a greater knowledge base and the benefit of shared experience. That's even better.
My guess, however, is that you would see either as equally desirable because you, of course, would be a member of one of the superior teams. Right.
The state is the great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everybody else. ~F. Bastiat
Look at the winning teams in each category -- you'll find large corporate sponsors or prestigious colleges.
I was on a FIRST team three years ago as a member of the University of Idaho / Moscow High School team. We had very little money and no experienced team members in machining, welding, electronics, etc. As a result, we did poorly. I'm glad we did. It gave us a chance to observe the winning teams and how they worked. I also was able to talk to several of the high school students on the team that wound up winning the competition. He's what we saw:
Observations of winning FIRST teams:
1. The only teams that did well had large corporate sponsors. In our competition, one company entered four teams - they all paced in the top 10. This one company had turned the FIRST competition into their own inter-company rivalry.
2. The students I talked to on the winning team didn't build most of the robot. They were allowed to draw pictures of what they thought it should look like (with help from engineers from the sponsor) and the sponsors chose the best design, and modified it to their liking, and built it for the students. The students were allowed to decorate it, put stickers on it, etc.
3. If you watch the winning teams in the pit areas, you see large amount of brand-new expensive tools (portable lathes, drill presses, laptops, 5-foot tall roll-away snap-on tool sets, etc.) Also, you will rarely see a student actually work on the robot. They hand tools to the sponsoring engineers, but only the adults actually fix the robots.
4. The parts kit you get with your registration does not change much from year to year, so you can design (for example) a drive system one year, and spend all of the next year perfecting it, so that this design is done and already built for the next year. The winning team was working on their robot for three months before they got the rules for the next competition. Since the nature of the competition does not change a great deal from year to year, you can reuse a lot of last year's work.
I think the students we worked with got a lot more out of the competition than the students on the winning teams - they designed, built, maintained, and drove THEIR robot. They learned about problem solving, choosing the right material for the right application (given the loading forces, etc.), team work (the students had to work together to built the robot.), and that if all you want to do is win you wind up sacrificing a lot of things.
If anyone has ever been a part of Olympics of the Mind, you'll find that this is a much better way of getting students interested in engineering and science (at least it was when I participated) I saw third-grade teams beat college teams because the materials and tools were limited to the point that money and professional machining skills had little benefit to the final outcome.