2013 FIRST Robotics Competition Kicks Off

theodp writes "Saturday, the 2013 FIRST Robotics Competition kicked off, and — much like the Pinewood Derby — mentoring by adult engineers there doesn't hurt one's chances of winning. So, any advice for 'ordinary' high schools going up against the likes of FIRST Robotics Teams sponsored and mentored by NASA? FIRST Robotics Team 254's Lab at NASA Ames Research Center, for instance, includes 'an 80% size practice field as well as a small machine shop, workspace, computer lab and meeting space.' Not surprisingly, Team 254 won the 2011 FIRST Championship." We took our camera to the Michigan FRC championships last year, and had a great time.

Comments

Craig Charles

[xushi]

Get Craig Charles to present and maybe it'll be more of a hit.. Heck I'd watch it then :)

Why not robotics competitions elsewhere?

[DavidClarkeHR]

Any robotics competition is interesting - but why don't we hear more about them on slashdot? The last mention of a competition was last year ... Skills Canada has a similar, yearly competition and has included robotics as a category for quite some time (Up here, it's been going on since 1995).

In fact, it looks like there are 26 different competitions that students can enter, per year ... though the geographic restrictions may limit individual participation.

Re:Why not robotics competitions elsewhere?

[3nails4aFalseProphet]

We don't hear about other competitions because...
A. They weren't founded by recognizable name like Dean Kamen
B. They don't have over 50,000 international participants
C. They don't hand out $16 million in scholarships
D. They haven't been around for 20+ years
E. They aren't based in the USA, which is where the majority of Slashdot's readership is located

I'm not saying we shouldn't have coverage of other robotics competitions, I'm just saying there are reasons we hear about this one in particular.

Re:Why not robotics competitions elsewhere?

[rmelton]

I think the http://firstlegoleague.org/ robotics for younger kids is a great program. I have helped judge the local event for the past 5 years and have seen first hand the enthusiasm and creativity in the kids. I think that the younger you can get them interested science/technology/building/creating the better!

Re:Why not robotics competitions elsewhere?

[Firehed]

FIRST is international, but most of the teams are US-based. Every regional competition I've attended has teams from Canada, Mexico, and at least one other continent - often two or three (Australia, Europe, South America)

Re:Why not robotics competitions elsewhere?

[ediron2]

Second year of mentoring a team, same impression. The science/engineering attractive power of this low-budget league amazes me.

Serious advice

[Anonymous Coward]

The first piece of advice: The point of the contest isn't to win, it's to have fun and learn stuff. Yes, just like in the pinewood derby, having dad build the thing means you're more likely to win the trophy; it also means you're less likely to win and have fun... So make sure that your mentors are mentoring, not doing the work for you.

The second piece of advice: NASA isn't the only place that has smart engineers. There are plenty of small engineering companies in the world; take a look around and find one! Even pretty small towns are likely to have some civil engineers or mechanical engineers...

Re:Serious advice

[DavidClarkeHR]

The second piece of advice: NASA isn't the only place that has smart engineers. There are plenty of small engineering companies in the world; take a look around and find one! Even pretty small towns are likely to have some civil engineers or mechanical engineers...

Third piece of advice: I know lots of engineers. I only know a few smart ones. Figure out who those smart ones are.

Re:Serious advice

[3nails4aFalseProphet]

Some more serious advice:
1. Remember you're competing as an alliance, not a single team. I didn't see anything mentioning if the alliances are created by participants, will be predetermined before the competition or randomly selected at the time of the event. Synergy between your bot and those of your alliance members could overcome opponents who build and function as individual bots instead of alliance members.
2. Don't do the same thing as everybody else. You've got to get crazy in your ideas. If you want the chance of a spectacular success, accept the risk of a spectacular failure.
3. You may be able to combine defense with offense. Check rules for any limitations on size/shape/blocking opponent goals. The first thing that popped into my head was a bot that deploys a huge clear sail/net in front of one or more goals, funneling attempted shots down into itself, which it then fires at the opposing goal. It wouldn't need to be very mobile, but would need resistance to opponent attempts to shove it out of position.
4. Playtest the hell out of whatever you build, in as many different scenarios as possible. If the rules don't forbid swapping components based on opponent and/or alliance members for a particular match, use that to your advantage.

Re:Serious advice

[Spiked_Three]

Sorry you got modded a troll, but I know you are correct.

Most people think FIRST is about encouraging science and education, after all that is what the tell the sheep. But in reality it is about Northrop-Grumman avoiding hiring 12 engineers to find the 1 smartest. By using things like FIRST to find the 1 best, they can avoid the overhead.

FIRST has nothing to do with Robots, it is electrical and mechanical engineering. Using Robot in the name is just another trick to get the public to go along with it.

I got very interested in FIRST at one time. I found that it is a money centered cheaters club. The mentors do the design, they do the majority of the software work, they fund expensive shop tools, then they enter kids who are just there to be social. The personalities I encountered were/are disgusting. The mentors are in it for themselves.

Sadly, Northrop-Grumman does identify the one kid who is smart, and the other 29 parental borrowed college funded grads will go jobless, but the banks made record profits so its ok.

Re:Serious advice

[Firehed]

You were a part of a team with qualities that wasn't in line with FIRST, if that's an accurate description of your experience.

While it's definitely true that there are teams where the mentors do all of the hard work (I've met some, and they tend to be looked down upon by the rest of the community), most of the teams actually have mentors being mentors and let the students run the show. But it's important to have volunteers that will police each other about doing too much - having an actual teacher as a mentor helps immensely here. Out of the at least two hundred teams I've worked with in varying capacities, only two or three were mentor-dominated, and that includes those I met at the world championships.

When I was mentoring a team, we had to often remind each other to back off a bit because as an adult it's really easy to accidentally dominate the process - especially when it's a fun and rewarding one. It's pretty impressive what the students can create when the mentors keep their roles confined to safety police, knowledge-base, and the occasional reality check ("no, you can't add flamethrowers", "cool idea, but it violates the laws of physics", "I like where you're going with that, but we tried something similar five years ago and it ended up being a disaster... go ahead and prototype it but don't get too attached in case it doesn't work out").

Re:Serious advice

[ediron2]

An old boy scout leader friend once called himself a ponderosa pine: a big tree, offering shelter and somewhere to lean. As a type-A nerd, it's one of my toughest lessons, to step back and make the kids do all the work. To ask good leading questions, or explain an engineering concept succinctly in a tangent. To keep them from hurting themselves. To praise good hacker insights, or doggedness.

Re:Serious advice

[ediron2]

Think I replied to you elsewhere, said you didn't know shit. From here, I can see it ain't that you're ignorant... you've just been burned. My apologies.

I completely get where you're coming from. Any championship starts to get burdened with side values/costs, whether it's olympics or these sorts of academic leagues or even amateur sports. It's the golden rule, in reverse: Money corrupts, more money corrupts things more. Maybe I'm lucky: my kids are so far down the damn well that merely qualifying for state boggled our minds and will expand their horizons immensely. Some of these kids come from entire families that have never set foot on a college campus or seen knowledge work as a career possibility. I don't want them to strive to almost win and then get nuked by the money-centered cheaters club. That'd sting bitterly, and again my condolences -- most of us have this happen occasionally. But that's not the only possible takeaway. I just want my kids to see more career options than their parents saw.

BTW, you're still wrong about FIRST w/r/t FIRST Lego: entirely preprogrammed minibots. The bots may seem lame, but what were you expecting for 5th and 6th grade kids?

Sponsors are a big deal

[CharlieG]

Making sponsor relationships is a big deal, as their time does not count towards your budget. Expect to work long hours. Find a mech eng to help.
Most important thing? Let he kids do the work and have fun. Our mentor team probably could have had a robot built already, or close (4 pro programmers, a ME, a machinist, an EE) but we let the kids design and build, we teach software design, how to use the shop, and act as a safety team.

Dropping the kit of parts to the school thisAM
Go Fe Maidens 2265 and SciBorgs 1155

Re:Sponsors are a big deal

[CharlieG]

Good luck to you guys too. I was the KoP transport person. We were at kickoff, and got our KoP, but the school building was closed till this AM

RC car or "real" robot or ?

[vlm]

I glanced at the PR stuff and was pleased to see its not a stereotypical "robot" = "homemade RC car with weapons destroys another homemade RC car with weapons". Apparently something about getting disks into goals, I assume as close as they can get to calling it Hockey without violating trademarks and patents. Does anyone know if its basically "homemade RC cars that play hockey" or are the robots autonomous? An autonomous robot competition would be more complicated, but much more interesting. The only autonomous competition I can remember is that "drive across the desert" thing from years back. Not that there's anything wrong with homemade RC cars.

Re:RC car or "real" robot or ?

[DrEasy]

There's also RoboCup: autonomous robots playing soccer.

Re:RC car or "real" robot or ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have not looked at the format for this year but I know in years past it is an element of both. There was about a 30 second period at the beginning of the competition that the robots had to navigate autonomously after which there was about ~2 minutes of time in which the "robots" were controlled as RC cars. Generally competing at a high level requires the robot to perform well in the autonomous section and then during the RC section knowing what tasks to control and what tasks to run autonomously is important (ie position is easy to control remotely, but if you have to shoot a basketball you should have the aiming done autonomously).

Re:RC car or "real" robot or ?

[hamjudo]

The first 15 seconds of each match are autonomous and the goals are worth twice as much. The remaining 2 minutes of each match are teleoperated.

Re:RC car or "real" robot or ?

[3nails4aFalseProphet]

The youtube video in the linked story explains the game pretty well. It starts as an autonomous competition, with double points for any goals during that time. Then teams are allowed to take control. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itHNW2OFr4Y

Re:RC car or "real" robot or ?

[RPI Geek]

This year the goal is to throw flying discs (frisbees) through goals of different heights (both in the sense of how high off the ground they are and how tall they are), and to get bonus points (awarded after the 2:15 match time runs out) by climbing a pyramid of bars (kind of like monkey bars on a playground, but a pyramid). The robots can weigh as much as 120#. Click here or look on YouTube for Ultimate Ascent.

On the topic of autonomous robots, the first 15 seconds of each match ARE autonomous! The thing is that each team (of high schoolers) is given 6 weeks from learning the rules of the game to design, build, write code for, and test their robot. Asking a team (which could have as few as 3 or 4 mentors and 5 high schoolers) to do that, and make the robot autonomous, is just asking too much. Even the bigger teams (I mentor for Team 250 - The Dynamos - and I am one of about 20 mentors and there are a few dozen students) have a hard enough time making the robot functional.

Lastly, it is very much against the spirit of FIRST to intentionally damage the other teams' robot; doing so will get you penalized and maybe even disqualified from the match. That doesn't mean no pushing and shoving though - playing defense is a valid strategy, but the game rules are designed to prevent damaging the other bots. In fact there are two term that are used widely in FIRST, gracious professionalism and coopertition. It is a common sight at competitions to see a team with a broken robot (either smoke pouring out or it just doesn't work) and people from other teams giving them parts, advice, and labor to get them back on the field.

Re:RC car or "real" robot or ?

[dkleinsc]

FIRST has never been about weaponry, but rather rewards good engineering and creative problem-solving. Its goal has always been to encourage kids to get excited about technology and engineering.

The guy who started it, Dean Kamen, is a prolific inventor (including wheelchairs that can climb stairs, the Segway PT, some medical devices, water purification pumps, and is now working on solar panel improvements), but has had a significant interest in science education throughout his career. Before he started FIRST, he spent a lot of his time starting a small science museum near where his company is based.

Re:RC car or "real" robot or ?

[Ksevio]

Continuing on the subject of autonomy - It's an area that basically requires miany more sensors/inputs (can bring up the costs quite a bit) and pushes a lot more time into the software, most of which can only be done after the robot is fully functional. If the challenge was the same every year (like playing soccer), then it would be reasonable to have fully autonomous or longer autonomous sessions, but as it is, the engineering/design of the robot is more interesting, so no one wants to see the super clever robot design flailing for 2 minutes around because a ball knocked a sensor out of place.

Re:RC car or "real" robot or ?

[vlm]

It's an area that basically requires miany more sensors/inputs

Well now autonomy is a tricky thing. For a car analogy you can design a unlimited F1 like competition where only world class engineering companies can compete with millions of bucks, lets say bipedal team of hydraulic/pneumatic robots playing soccer. You can also design a competition where kids, or not much more advanced than kids, can actually compete, like maybe a tabletop maze runner, maybe a somewhat simplified air-hockey table rig, maybe a "fire fighting robot" with a squirt gun trying to hit a candle. Robot tag? A "big" smart autonomous maze runner would be kind of interesting, held on a golf course or parking lot.

Its like saying you can't have a programming competition because developing the linux kernel took too long to replicate in a competition. Yet... corewars...

Another argument is just call a spade a spade and call it a "Homemade radio controlled car competition". For a standard /. car analogy, they don't call the drag racing strip in Kentucky "The Kentucky Derby" despite not having any horses and being run by cars. Although I have to admit it would be kind of hilarious to see a biological equine horse race a homemade (electric? radio controlled?) car on a drag strip.

Re:RC car or "real" robot or ?

[vlm]

Now that's real robotics! That I would attend, or sponsor, or mentor, or at least like to read about. One minor problem is the only three events on the web page for 2013 are in Germany, Netherlands, and Iran. More to come, hopefully.

Re:RC car or "real" robot or ?

[ediron2]

You're reporting what you remembered from your ear to the ground? WTF, doesn't google and wikipedia work where you are?! Did you attend a single FIRST contest? What about the junior or Lego FIRST leagues?

Thanks for admitting you were doing the usual slashdot thing of just spouting off random unsubstantiated b.s., but please... your rant is what is being discussed. You somewhat pwned the conversation with your imagined warrior killer-bot claims.

I'm still reading the thread, but haven't seen mention of FIRST's younger levels yet. And from experience, I can vouch that FIRST Lego are diametrically opposite what you imagine:

The earliest tiers of FIRST are done using Lego. The tier I'm involved in (with a large team of 5th and sixth grade kids) is fully autonomous, involves 'flip switch', 'move object', 'select/gather and return to base' type goals, has a ridiculously-short 3-minute round for nearly a dozen goals (forces prioritiziation), and that part of the competition is sandwiched in with challenges geared toward demonstrating teamwork, public presentation, and learning about and solving some problems geared to some contemporary theme (this year is challenges old people/seniors face, last year was food safety). All of this is wrapped up with a loud, steady mantra of 'graceful professionalism'. I'm mentoring kids in a very-poor neighborhood whose school is working to become a small-city science/tech magnet school (my 2nd year), and was dumbstruck when our team qualified for state (barely; 12th out of 40+ teams in our regional competition).

The senior-high-school FIRST competitors often are judges and support staff for our competitions. This year's emcee was a geeky/charismatic local high-school math-olympics coach. Last year, I saw one of the high-school FIRST team's robots: they had a dozen interesting bits of good-prototyping best practices I never got close to being taught until college: an adjustable chassis (L-channel with holes, like giant erector set parts), deep-cycle batteries and tires and servo-driven motors, a data bus and carefully-built wiring looms for each mechanism, design for field-service/redundancy/spares, onboard and remote diagnostic frameworks, feedback mechanisms, etc. They used an inverted wifi home router (a modded wrt54g or similar) on the robot to talk to their laptop for data/communicatiojn. The chassis was bigger and weighed more than I expected (about 75kg, a meter per side, more than a meter tall). I forget the goal: collect and bin many balls on the playfield, maybe? Gather, scoop, lift, dump, plus motion and detection.

Full disclosure: IANA First representative/spokesperson. For the record, I loved battlebots. My team's kids geek out when they see 'em on youtube. But I can completely see how shifting to combat-competition would drown out or destroy attention on many of the fundamentals being sought here. There's competition in FIRST, because adversarial competition is motivational/educational crack. It's that once you introduce combative sorts of competition, it seems damn hard to not lose ALL of the attention on the other harder-to-teach ideals FIRST is after.

Re:RC car or "real" robot or ?

[Ksevio]

It's probably in part due to Dean Kamen's influence - the man who made the segway and other mobility devices. The competition pushes more of the mechanical portion of robotics rather than the software. There are other competitions that focus on other areas, but I'm sure the fun of getting to drive around a robot attracts a lot of people (personally I prefer seeing a creation handle itself). The younger FIRST with legos does a bit more autonomous actions (though even there it was usually "drive forwards until mechanical action takes place, drive backwards")

Re:RC car or "real" robot or ?

[ediron2]

Check my prior comment. FIRST Lego is: limited # of sensors/motors, fully autonomous, and designed by kids (5th and 6th graders). Hit the 'net, do some research, and you'll see just how full of s**t your imagined description of the FIRST leagues is.

Better yet, attend a competition (the whole day... listen to the opening/closing ceremonies, sit in on presentations). You'll see they're pushing for engineering prowess MORE than for robotics solutions. As for 'learning something about robotics', even when a system is remotely-controlled, servo feedback and calibration become a big damn deal. When things break, or during co-op rounds, kids have to know what they're doing. These kids learn WHY robotics is tough, and begin to create compensation techniques, even if they don't master robotics enough to do full-autonomy on new hardware on a strange challenge in a few weeks on a few-thousand-dollar budget... or, in my kids' case, on a few-hundred-dollar budget.

Yes, having good sponsors, team members or parents is crucial to some aspects of the competitions. But coming from mentoring a huge team (nobody is turned away) in a disadvantaged neighborhood, I'll personally attest that your post couldn't be more wrong. Or more insulting.

Re:RC car or "real" robot or ?

[CharlieG]

Yep, we cracked a wheel last year, and another team handed us one. At hte same time, we were handing a motor to another team.

Our all Girls team (we have 2)
http://www.drivelikeagirlfilm.com/

Re:RC car or "real" robot or ?

[Spiked_Three]

Yeah, I've been there. Started to get involved but quickly became disgusted at the politics. I saw shop equipment in the pits that cost more than my home for the winning team, co-incidence? It's all about money. There may be some good intentioned mentors out there, you may be one I have no idea, but I guarantee the top level teams do not have them.

I'm glad it is insulting, it is meant to be. Organizations like FIRST are driving America's education the wrong way.

Re:RC car or "real" robot or ?

[Spiked_Three]

Just a follow up - to be REAL specific. check out this FLL team http://first3574.org/index.php Click the Space Elevator link. Notice the Picture? That is a copyrighted picture of mine, used without permission. What do you think that FLL team is teaching the kids? I was copied on an email telling that guy that I took pictures and that he needed to ask me before he used them. Did he? hell no. My hate for FLL has gotten stronger. I think I will help teach that team the legal system and how it can ruin your day.

Re:LabView still?

[trout007]

Is there an open source platform that will contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware, software, and money to help stage the event?

Re:"Coopertition" and "Gracious Professionalism"

[kaizendojo]

I'd have to agree; back a few years ago when I was working at a private school, we started a team in cooperation with a school for special needs students. We won the Judges award for Extraordinary Partnership first year in, and second year placed in the regionals. You have to really look at what FIRST is all about, and play to your team's strengths. Also, partnerships with industry and engineering firms can be a big help here too.

Working with students in FIRST was probably one of the most enjoyable and rewarding high points in my entire career. I'd recommend it to anyone.

Best of luck to you and your team!

Teamwork

[wirelessjb]

Getting mentors that have engineering or shop skills (and equipment) is important, but frequently overlooked or undervalued is getting a mentor that knows how to talk to kids and get them organized and working as a team. I'm sure there are plenty of engineers that can do that, though its not the most common set of soft skills in a highly technical person. A teacher or a coach that can help the kids break down the competition, prioritize, divide up tasks, help kids identify their strengths and weaknesses as individuals and as a team, set schedules and priorities, and constantly help the kids remember why they are there can go a long way towards a successful competition and teach really valuable life lessons that they are not as likely to get in the classroom at college.

I'm a judge

[adamjgp]

I'm a FIRST Robotics judge for one of their regional competitions. After looking at this year's game, it seems to me that there will be frisbees flying all over the place. This is my 2nd year judging. Any good questions I you all think I should ask the kids?

Check out the Robowranglers...

[Panaflex]

Out here the highschool team is pretty interesting and wins many competitions, though I haven't been out there. I know they have sponsorship from a couple of big engineering outfits, but it seems that they practice their work and learn quite a bit. http://www.robowranglers148.com/

Taking a que from most all human endeavors (sports, music, etc), it would seem that testing, prototyping and practice are key elements. You need lots of time, material, and a coach that fosters talent from the whole team. Depending on a few key players will only lead to short-term glory and frustration.

You don't need NASA...

[swx2]

Having participated in FIRST myself during my high school years, our team was lead by a local University, 2 engineers from a locally based (but still large enough to be middling on the Fortune 500 list...) company, and in my first year, we won the championship in the early 2000s, and have since then won a few more times after I left.
It's an amazingly fun experience, and besides, as a HS student, this should be more of a learning experience for you. It's great to see the whole engineering process, from problem definition to solution implementation... including some of the work-place drama that goes on >_>

Current FIRST Mentor and former Student

[Ancantus]

The object of the game (and I know it sounds cheezy) is not to win, its to learn. When I was a student, the mentors let US do the programming, designing, etc. While the robot wasn't as good as the adviser-bots; when your in the pit and YOU'RE working on the robot...well I wouldn't have traded it for anything in the world. You might not have a full practice field (hell I don't think we ever had the robot WORKING in time to practice anything!), but it really is fun no matter what place you finish in.

Now as an adviser, it drives me nuts when the students don't want to take the path I think is best. But FIRST is about experience, it shouldn't be a classroom where students sit down and watch engineers build things. Let the students make the mistakes (to an extent) and of course let them to ALL the work.

If your looking for good mentors, ask around the local college (if there is a engineering/technical minded college around your area). I know after I graduated from high school, I was eager to come back and work with the team as an mentor.