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High School Robotics Competition Kicks Off

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the all-fun-till-they-nuke-the-colonies dept.

DeviceGuru writes "Some 35,000 high school students from over 1500 high schools in eight countries today began competing in the annual US FIRST student robotics contest. This year's competition, dubbed FIRST Overdrive, challenges the student teams to build semi-autonomous robots that will move 40-inch diameter inflatable balls around a playing field and score the most points. In this year's game, two alliances of three teams each work collaboratively to win each round. An animated simulation of the game (in several video formats) is available online."

44 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Robocup by MoHaG · · Score: 1

    Why don't they just enter Robocup?

    1. Re:Robocup by Gertlex · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why enter Robocup?

      I'm sure it's a pet fave of yours, but why might it be better for high school students who don't know much about engineering in the first place?

      FIRST team do a new robot every year. Makes it easier for students to get in to. FIRST has the coordination for over a thousand teams to compete in roughly 40 regional competitions. FIRST robots are barely autonomous... generally the first 15 seconds of every game has been the autonomous mode. The rest is been teleoperated. FIRST provides teams with a starting kit for each year's robot, and standardizes key components, such as the motors. This fosters a community of sharing how-to info in using and troubleshooting most of the robot.

      Ultimately, FIRST robots aren't very complex (though they can be for a team with a lot of support and organization). A bipedal soccer playing autonomous robot is a lot more complex of a project that I would have been willing to jump into in high school.

    2. Re:Robocup by Blnky · · Score: 2, Informative

      Why don't they just enter Robocup? One of the reasons is they are attempting to give the kids a sense of what is like as an adult who would do anything similar in real life. They keep the exact nature of the contest a huge secret until the start of the six week building time. Then you have that time and that time only to design, implement and test everything. If you can't do it in time, you loose, there is no extension. The clock is always ticking thus giving the right amount of pressure. The only thing missing is being able to scream at the moronic marketing guy who "promised" this product to some huge company/government in six weeks without checking with the engineers first.
  2. Interesting to see who wins by mc+moss · · Score: 2, Informative

    It will be interesting to see what type of schools in what countries do better. I participated in the Panasonic robotics competition held in NJ when I went to high school. A majority of the time, it was the private schools that end up doing the best.

    1. Re:Interesting to see who wins by Mazin07 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      In FIRST, the best teams are usually the ones that have the big-name sponsors (Motorola, GM, Delphi, etc.), meaning a lot more equipment, money, and professional mentors. Whether this is causal is uncertain, but the correlation seems to be there.

    2. Re:Interesting to see who wins by Fourier404 · · Score: 1

      I've seen that the ones who win are the ones who have NASA build their robots for them. Usually NASA "mentors" a couple of the teams from my region, so they end up with the exact same robot (except for the paint color). Yes, I'm bitter, especially because the competition specifically condoned this kind of "collaboration" for this year.

    3. Re:Interesting to see who wins by halifamous · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I agree, but I'll say disillusioned, rather than bitter.

      Last year was my first as a teacher/mentor for a Canadian team. It was a real wake-up call to go to last year's competition and see the team beside with GM logos on everything. How should high school kids be expected to compete against a team of GM-trained P.Eng mentors?

      When Dean Kamen said today that "every team should have professional engineers", I realized that I didn't know what the competition was actually about. I thought we were here to teach teamwork, planning, design, and show kids their potential. It's good that FIRST wants to provide students with positive role models and a glimpse at what engineering is actually about, but unfortunately, this makes for a very two-tiered competition: some schools have a GM plant in their backyard, or they are given work space at NASA, and they do really well; some schools are lucky to have a few undergrad volunteers, scrape a few dollars together for parts and a power drill, and they get to watch the other teams show up with manicured robots.

      I like that the projects are challenging, but that I wish it was assumed the students did the heavy lifting. Is it unreasonable to assume that every team will all have identical opportunities? No, but at least then the competition wouldn't be unfair by design.

      Ok, rant over. My students are lucky we can participate in this competition and we're not going to quit just because our major sponsor has never put men on the moon. I wish my school had done something this amazing when I was a student.

    4. Re:Interesting to see who wins by billdar · · Score: 1
      I can dig what you're saying, but hopefully I can give you another angle

      I'm a professional controls engineer mentoring a team in California. I've also been a judge at the competitions. And I agree every team needs at least one, ideally a ME, EE, and Embedded CS guy. (or a nerd of magnitude to encompass all of those)

      The reason is that while the kids and non-tech parents are enthusiastic and have great ideas, they have no concept of scope (time and $$) or how to implement their ideas. Project management also benefits from someone with experience, you got to find something for the 20+ kids to work on.

      Take a simple actuating arm. The kids/parents may figure out what materials to use, type of actuation, how to mount it, etc...

      Having an engineer around tends to benefit the kids not only in robustness of the final product, but they learn how things are done in Real Life (TM). Why choose pneumatic over electric articulation, why aluminum over steal or wood, why a particular motion is easier to control/program for. All that and the 6 weeks isn't burned trying out obviously deficient designs.

      Remember, the FIRST competition isn't 100% about the robot. Judges walk the pits and talk to the kids. They travel in pairs or 3's so one judge doesn't get snowed by a canned response. From my experience, it is obvious who actually did the work within 5 min. and those teams are awarded in the end.

      Our last year's robot was 100% not my design. But I like to think that my participation help the robot robust, competitive, and completed on time. And hopefully the kids learned more than swearing in the process :)

      --
      I am billdar, and I approve this message.
  3. Nitpick by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 1

    From TFS:

    ...challenges the student teams to build semi-autonomous robots that can will move 40-inch balls..."

    So the robots are advanced enough to will move the balls with their own will? All that talk about AI being difficult must be bullshit.

    1. Re:Nitpick by Sangui · · Score: 1

      The AI being difficult is our Robotic overlords fooling us.

  4. Re:i guess that was the by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    No, You were the second FIRST post. Thanks for trying though.

  5. good strategy by ILuvRamen · · Score: 1

    I heard one of the people that did well in a competion just like this used a super old program/game called AI Bug to very quickly test out movement logic and search pattern and reactions and stuff. It kinda has its own programming language that's like pseudocode with GOTO line # commands. I've used it before myself and my bug was unbeatable in combat hehehe. But yeah they got it to be really, really intelligent cuz they could just change some code and hit go and let the little bug on the screen act out the code quickly instead of actually waiting for your robot to do it in real life. Also you can build a replica of the arena virtually so you don't have to do it physically.
    If anyone's entering, see if you can find that program or one like it cuz it makes things WAY easier

    --
    Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
  6. Restrictions? by SirLurksAlot · · Score: 1

    Are there any restrictions on what languages/tools/etc they can use aside from the kit of parts provided? The article doesn't mention anything about it, and searching USFirst's website (which seems to be getting hammered right now) doesn't turn up anything either.

    --
    God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
    1. Re:Restrictions? by concernedadmin · · Score: 1

      Last year it was C and EasyC (a scripting language for programmer-deficient teams [usually the new ones that have more than enough to worry about like funding, etc.]). You can use any tools, though a lot of the teams used MPLAB. I used vim, make, mcc (the Microchip compiler), and the ifiloader for Linux.

    2. Re:Restrictions? by SirLurksAlot · · Score: 1

      What was your experience with the contest like? It seems like an interesting project, even if you're not a high schooler.

      --
      God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
    3. Re:Restrictions? by TwilightSentry · · Score: 2, Informative

      Being a student at a high school which is participating for the first time this year, I attended a seminar on the rules, regulations, etc. Here's a summary of what seemed interesting:

      The competition starts with an automated "challenge," in which the robot must do without human intervention. It then progresses into the manual portion of the competition, in which you can have whatever blend of automation and manual control you wish.

      You're limited to the parts in the kit, plus an approved list of parts from third-party vendors. This is apparrently to avoid, for example, someone adding a ridiculously-powerful motor and accidentally running a 200-lb "robot" through the plexiglass around the areana and into the stands or operator booths.

      The embedded computer is based on a PIC. Apart from that, it basically contains a wireless reciever of some sort to allow an official to shut down all robots in the areana in case Something Bad(tm) happens. You can add electronics if you want, but all connections to motors must be through the provided system.

      Programming is usually done in C; Microchip's SDK is included in the kit. There's apparrently a small library containing functions for motor control and such things. You get a 25hz runloop, from which you can schedule your own functions to run.

      Motors are connected through solid-state PWM drivers. The PIC provides PWM for you, but a PID controller (which is pretty much essential) must be implemented in software.

      --
      How to enable garbage collection on a system without protected memory: #define malloc() ((void *) rand())
    4. Re:Restrictions? by megaditto · · Score: 1

      They probably enjoy it so much they go on to build the real ones

      --
      Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
    5. Re:Restrictions? by Lumilux · · Score: 1

      EasyC is not a scripting language; it's an IDE for writing in C with the WPIlib library. It can rookie teams get started pretty quickly, but it's painfully restrictive to work in if you know how to write C. My team's using Gobby, WPIlib, make, mcc, and ifiloader on EEEPCs.

      --
      Lumilux (http://lumilux.org/) - Heptaweekly photography.
    6. Re:Restrictions? by SirLurksAlot · · Score: 1

      Of course, there are plenty of other uses for robots besides war machines and bar disarmament.

      --
      God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
    7. Re:Restrictions? by Fourier404 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually, most years the initial autonomous period (which was only like 10-15 second long...) was really completely independent, but this year we can use tv remotes and a provided IR receiver to have limited control of the robot even during this period. These really aren't "robots" anymore, but just complicated RC cars with arms. I'm not complaining though, my team has enough problems without having to worry about programming the thing. All we have to do is reconfigure the wheel-joystick relationship and we're set.

    8. Re:Restrictions? by Blnky · · Score: 3, Interesting

      As a mentor I contribute my time and expertise for free to a local school who has competed for several years. I can say it is both highly stressful and highly fun at the same time. Both the high-school kids and mentors enjoy it a lot and it is really intense. I have seen several kids who had never previously considered messing with this "sciency stuff [sic]" get involved and completely change their minds about what they thought was cool and what they were going to consider going to college for. I am also very impressed by the solutions that are successfully built for the challenges. Dealing with the time limits, scavenging for parts, keeping things within specs, and conceiving/building a successful design would be a challenge even for adults. Its a great real world like experience for the kids.

    9. Re:Restrictions? by Workaphobia · · Score: 1

      Speaking as an alumnus programmer and someone who was at a regional kickoff today:

      Development for the FIRST Robotics Controller is in C and typically uses MPLab as an IDE and IFILoader to transfer the program over. FIRST provides default code that takes care of all of the basic yet difficult tasks such as handling some interrupts and communicating with the human operating interface, and provides stubs for user logic in various modes (default, autonomous, low-latency code). There have been reports of some teams using Linux on development machines, but it's not that common.

      The controller is split into a master process and user processor. The user one is programmed by the team, and the master one is flashed from binary firmware and implements critical features such as radio communication, restrictions for autonomous mode, and a disabled mode for safety and competition control.

      --
      Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
    10. Re:Restrictions? by Workaphobia · · Score: 1

      And it looks like the camera is significantly less important this year, the IR device taking its place. This should significantly lower the stress level of most teams' programmers.

      --
      Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
    11. Re:Restrictions? by Workaphobia · · Score: 1

      FIRST is an incredible competition. The idea is to get a new young generation of students interested in science and engineering, by creating a cooperative environment between high school teams, business and university sponsors, mentors, and even other teams. It is often very stressful and exciting, and this kickoff marks the beginning of a six week intense building period, followed by shipping the robot and competing at regional events. Every team reacts differently, but there's a good sense of community around the team and their bot. In most cases there's an immense amount of knowledge sharing between teams, facilitated by the forum chiefdelphi.com.

      It's a worthy organization, but it takes a tremendous amount of dedication and support.

      --
      Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
    12. Re:Restrictions? by colman77 · · Score: 1

      FIRST is awesome. I was the main programmer/electronics man my junior and senior years of HS (2005 and 2006), it was more fun than any other club/team I did. The competitions are insane, you won't ever find more geeks in one place, heh. The atmosphere is very competitive, but at the same time there's a comraderie between participants and teams. For instance, I helped a team from a neighboring high school with their program, then went out and dismantled (seriously... we got disqualified) their robot a few rounds later.

      I live in New Hampshire, where FIRST was founded, so Dean Kamen makes his token appearance/speech (in the same denim shirt) every year. The kids WORSHIP him - it is incredible. I was never particularly fond of him, especially after the segway flopped, but I have to say-- that failure is far overshadowed by the success of FIRST as far as I am concerned.

  7. New competition components by Redbluefire · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The new hybrid period at the beginning of the match is where we'll really get to see teams "shine" (pun intended); You see, in the past teams usually just programed a direct control system and maybe some of the more savvy teams did some dead reckoning for an autonomous mode- Now teams are going to have to figure out just what predictive programming is, and are going to have to design their own method of conveying commands. Personally I'm expecting the majority of teams to use IR, but as I said, some teams are going to be very clever and use something completely unorthodox, and that's the best part of the competition imho.

    1. Re:New competition components by wolf08 · · Score: 1

      I'm part of a first year team (we're called rookies) and when I attended my regional kickoff today we were already discussing what we could and couldn't realistically do in the 5-6 weeks of build time. It's very interesting because we have so many ideas that would really improve the competitiveness of our robot that we have already had to drop because we know that they would take way too much time.

      On a side note:

      Does anyone know if I can use C++ to program our robot instead of C (not even objective C >_>)? Also, does anyone know of any Linux software replacements for IFI_Loader and MPLAB? Thanks!

    2. Re:New competition components by Redbluefire · · Score: 1

      I personally cant help you, since I'm happily using IFI_Loader and MPLAB (ok, not happily, but I can live with it ), but on the very slim chance you don't know about it, the website Chief Delphi is basically a huge forum dedicated to FIRST, a pillar of FIRST's community, and I guarantee you dozens of people there can help. ;)

    3. Re:New competition components by kevlarman · · Score: 1

      i believe there's a replacement for IFI_loader on sourceforge somewhere, you'll need to run the compiler in wine, but it's probably a really bad idea to start trying this stuff on a team's first year. there's no way(that i know of) you'll get any C++ code on the robot, and no real need for it, in all likelyhood you'll be writing under 200 lines of your own code, and most of the difficulty with it will be making it work as you expect it (#define is your friend here). when you're dealing with 130lbs of robot, it's a lot harder than you would think to make it do what you want. whether or not your team will actually be using the kitbot frame, get them to assemble it and attach all the sensors to it so the programmers can start getting some idea of how to use them. -former team100 programmer

      --
      A mouse is a device used to point to the xterm you want to type in
  8. I'm amazed how these contests have changed. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    When I was in high school in the 1950s, I participated in engineering contests like these, at least until they canceled them. Back in those days, they usually had us build a structure of some sort. Bridges were a common one, with the goal being to build a bridge that could hold a certain weight, but was made from only certain materials and the bridge itself had to be under a specific weight. In most cases, it was possible to win the competitions just by doing a good job gluing the balsa wood together, and just using the triangle shape.

    But the kids nowadays must know complex fields like robots and software development. Even with simplified AI, it's still no doubt a real challenge. And to bring collaboration into the mix makes it even more difficult. Looking back, those of us building bridges had it really easy.

    I still recall why the canceled our bridge building contests. One of the fellows at one of the other high schools in the district somehow managed to drop a 15 pound weight onto his scrotum while trying to attach it to his bridge. We all thought he was partaking in horseplay and got what he deserved, but apparently the contest organizers thought differently, and canceled all such contests.

  9. All these robotics stories mean that... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Do you know what this means? Lots of semen-guzzling robots looking forward to playing with your giant balls.

  10. GOATSE WARNING by Ankur+Dave · · Score: 1

    The parent's link redirects to http://www.goatsemarathon.com./

  11. Mythbuster help? by athdemo · · Score: 1

    Is this the same tournament that Grant from Mythbusters was helping kids out with?

    1. Re:Mythbuster help? by Junkyboy55 · · Score: 1

      Yes... He was at a competition or something or another and helping out with a team or something...

      --
      One day the world of robotics will have the answer. ... Robonauts Home
    2. Re:Mythbuster help? by billdar · · Score: 1
      Yeah, he's a mentor or a sponsor for the Richmond, CA team. He made an appearance at the UC Davis regional competition the last two years.

      --
      I am billdar, and I approve this message.
  12. Used to be in FIRST by 0x000000 · · Score: 1

    FIRST Robotics is what inspired me to go further with embedded systems. I am currently a Software Engineer at UAT, and am working a lot with embedded systems and microprocessors to create robots. FIRST Robotics also provided me with a real insight into the building, developing and creating ideas to build a finished product. Even as our Robot was being crated we were still working on it.

    FIRST has also taught me to assume that all hardware is faulty, and especially expect it to be wrong, or not working as I would expect it to work. That was the hardest part for me, as I always thought developing software that the hardware would work as one would be expected.

    I joined FIRST my senior year in school, and I am sad that I had not joined earlier. It provided me with a huge amount of fun and a great group of friends who I still talk to, especially since they are great guys and girls!

    --
    cat /dev/null > .signature
  13. No more programming by nukem996 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was the chief programmer on my team when I was in high school and every year I saw that programming became less and less important to the event and it was more engineering and marketing based. Its really disappointing and this year sounds like they just build a robot and drive it around, autonomous is becoming less and less important and its no longer 100% autonomous this year.

    1. Re:No more programming by Null537 · · Score: 1

      This is partly misleading. The 15 seconds (now 30) has been completely autonomous in the past, and isn't this year. Keep in mind autonomous wasn't even added until 2003, where autonomous meant very very little, it has gotten bigger since that first year, though admittedly it has varied from year to year.

    2. Re:No more programming by wegstar · · Score: 1

      I was the chief programmer on my team when I was in high school and every year I saw that programming became less and less important to the event and it was more engineering and marketing based. Its really disappointing and this year sounds like they just build a robot and drive it around, autonomous is becoming less and less important and its no longer 100% autonomous this year. Very True. As the chief programmer for my team, I see that programming has become increasingly less important in the FIRST Robotics Competition. As for the marketing aspect, I believe it is what contributes to its decline.

      We are supplied with a custom "robot controller" made by Microchip especially for the FIRST competition. This controller costs $450 for what several cheap 8-bit Atmel microcontrollers to do. Locked in a black box complete with warranty stickers, this device, which we are forced to use, kills innovation, in my opinion. However, at the same time, it maintains a fair playing ground.

      On top of the proprietary hardware, we have proprietary software- a C compiler for the PIC18F8722 PIC in the device, and an IDE, and a programmer for the robot controller. All three software packaes are extremely limiting. First, the compiler does not support long filenames in Windows! Second, in my tests, all three pieces of software do not seem to run under Linux.

      We use special code prepared for the device written by a NASA engineer. The problem is that he opens an API/interface for us to use while leaving the rest of the implementation hidden in a nice *.lib. This in my opinion, oversimplifies the programming aspect of the microcontroller. Seeking any further implementation, such as use of interrupts requires going through the actual datasheet- this is the kind of programming I am seeing less of.

      IIRC, the FIRST kit comes with a "drag and drop" programming software. I don't remember clearly, but as the programmer, I felt offended after reading the software description, and we promptly destroyed the CD in the Teacher Lounge's microwave.

      One last word. FIRST has been strongly urging that teams seek mentors for help for the practical experience learned through the help. This is not the case however: I've seen teams that have been practically taken over by so-called "mentors" and parents. Mentors and parents are good things, and so are 100% student teams. However, mentors and parents must be passive teachers not members, and that student teams must seek to advance beyond the bare minimum.

      FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. In order to innovate, I believe that FIRST must pursue more "Open" initiatives and return to its student run roots.
    3. Re:No more programming by nukem996 · · Score: 1

      I was able to get the proprietary C compiler to run under wine with make files. The school computer I had was way to locked down for development so I got it working under both Ubuntu(4 or 5) and Gentoo along with make files. Theres a number of posts here on how to do it. I also found a GPL compiler but didn't have the time to play around with it. I agree it was very locked down and I hated using it. I would have been very happy running embedded Linux on some low powered chip that had much more/better documentation available. They really control the base code they give you as well. I wanted to release my additions to the first code back into community and released it on a sourceforge page. While I admit I should have asked the NASA engineer(I was going to but I honestly forgot) the way he reacted to it was very surprising. I didn't respond to any posts on chiefdelphi because I was busy but appearntly he wanted me to take the code down. I ended up getting call from someone telling me that if I didn't take the code down within 12 hours my entire team would be banned from first. I took it down and asked why and was told that he didn't want anyone to confuse his code with mine thus forcing any team that wanted to use the base code(which is pretty much mandatory) to keep it closed source. The time I was in FIRST everything was done in C but I know last year they added EasyC. I was told my old team ended up creating a C base and EasyC base and because they split there efforts so much neither code base worked that well. They have thus shifted all there efforts to EasyC(a decision the programming team as well as the mentors were against but the team coach thought it was better). They have told me its much harder and buggier then coding in C but then again they only have one or two programmers and the main focus is on marketing and building the robot not programming it. The complaint you have about mentors building and programming the entire robot has been a complaint that has always been there. Luckily my team did let the students build and program and the three mentors we had were only mentors but I've seen some robots build in a corporate lab by engineers and not the team. Its really sad I think the idea of FIRST is great but the way things are turning out is horrible. Proprietary software chosen by which company donates, programming will soon be no longer needed at all, and mentors build many teams robots with no repercussions.

  14. Incredible by Shrimpster · · Score: 1

    It's an incredible organization... I've been submitting this story annually for 2-3 years, glad to see it finally got posted! Go Teams!

  15. Proud to say.... by armanox · · Score: 1

    That my college (Capitol College) hosted the kickoff for the Chesapeake region. Also proud that My high school's team, Team 007, consistently performs well in the competitions.

    --
    I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
  16. ah high school by kaizokuace · · Score: 1

    I participated in the FIRST comp all 4 years of high school. It was pretty fun to work on design and construction but really all the kids on our team knew that it was all about getting to go on trips during the school year for regionals and finals.

    --
    Balderdash!
  17. It's a fun event by kreativenaim · · Score: 1

    While my high school robotics team never competed while I was on it, we did serve as volunteers for a couple of years. Y'know, the guys who reset the field after each round and other grunt work.

    It was interesting to watch though, and looked like great fun.