FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is an international high school robotics competition. Each year, teams of high school students, coaches, and mentors work during a six-week period to build robots capable of competing in that year's game that weigh up to 125 pounds (57 kg).[4] Robots complete tasks such as scoring balls into goals, placing inner tubes onto racks, hanging on bars, and balancing robots on balance beams. The game, along with the required set of tasks, changes annually. While teams are given a kit of a standard set of parts during the annual Kickoff,[5] they are also allowed and encouraged to buy or fabricate specialized parts. FIRST Robotics Competition is one of five robotics competition programs organized by FIRST, the other four being FIRST LEGO League Discover, FIRST LEGO League Explore, FIRST LEGO League Challenge, and FIRST Tech Challenge.
The culture of FIRST Robotics Competition is built around two values. "Gracious Professionalism" embraces the competition inherent in the program but rejects trash talk and chest-thumping, instead embracing empathy and respect for other teams. "Coopertition" emphasizes that teams can cooperate and compete at the same time.[6] The goal of the program is to inspire students to be science and technology leaders.
2022 was the 31st year of the competition. 3,225 teams, including more than 80,000 students and 25,000 mentors from 26 countries, built robots. The 2022 season included 58 Regional Competitions, 90 District Qualifying Competitions, and 11 District Championships.[2] In 2022, over 450 teams won slots to attend the FIRST Championship event, where they competed in a tournament. In addition to on-field competition, teams and team members competed for awards recognizing entrepreneurship, creativity, engineering, industrial design, safety, controls, media, quality, and exemplifying the core values of the program. As a result of COVID-19, the amount of active teams decreased during the 2021 season; however, numbers began to increase during the 2022 season.
As of 2023, there were 3,300 high school teams with approximately 83,000 high schoolers across 31 countries competing.[7]
FIRST was founded in 1989 by inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen,[9] with inspiration and assistance from physicist and MIT professor emeritus Woodie Flowers. Kamen was disappointed with the number of kids—particularly women and minorities—who did not consider science and technology careers and decided to do something about it. As an inventor, he looked for activities that captured the enthusiasm of students and decided that combining the excitement of sports competition with science and technology had the potential to inspire students.
Distilling what sports had done right into a recipe for engaging young people, Kamen says, turned out to be relatively straightforward. "It's after school, not in school. It's aspirational, not required," he explained to me.
"You don't get quizzes and tests, you go into competitions and get trophies and letters. You don't have teachers, you have coaches. You nurture, you don't judge. You create teamwork between all the participants. We justify sports for teamwork but why, when we do it in the classroom, do we call it cheating?"
Most of all, it was a nonjudgmental space, where in contrast science and math in traditional educational settings had been soured with embarrassment and uncertainty.[10]
Kamen has stated that FIRST is the invention he feels most proud of and predicts that participants will be responsible for significant technological advances in years to come.[11] The first FIRST Robotics Competition season was in 1992 and had one event at a high school gymnasium in New Hampshire.[12] That first competition was relatively small-scale, similar in size to today's FIRST Tech Challenge and Vex Robotics Competition games. Robots relied on a wired connection to receive data from drivers; in the following year, it quickly transitioned to a wireless system.[13][14]
3,225 teams from 26 countries competed in 2022 Rapid React. Of these, 2,859 are "veteran teams" (meaning they have competed in a previous season), and 176 are "rookie teams" (meaning that 2022 was their first season of competition).[2]
The countries represented are listed below: (in decreasing order of number of teams as of 2022)
The FIRST Championship is the culmination of the FIRST Robotics Competition season, and occurs in late April each year. Roughly 800 teams participated in two Championship events in 2018, held in April in Houston, Texas and Detroit, Michigan.[15] After the 2022 championships concluded FIRST announced that the world championship would take place at a single location, Houston, Texas, for the 2023 and 2024 seasons.[16]
Media exposure
The PBS documentary "Gearing Up" followed four teams through the 2008 season.[17]
In the television series Dean of Invention, Dean Kamen made appeals promoting FIRST prior to commercial breaks.[18]
In 2008, FRC Team 1114, Simbotics, was featured in an ongoing storyline on the hit Canadian TV drama "Degrassi: Next Generation". Team 1114's 2006-2007 world champion VEX robot made an appearance, as well as their 2008 world champion FRC robot.
During the 2010 FIRST Robotics Competition season, FIRST team 3132, Thunder Down Under, was followed by a Macquarie University student film crew to document the first year of FIRST Robotics Competition in Australia. The crew produced a documentary film called I, Wombot.[19][20] The film premiered during the 2011 Dungog Film Festival.[21][22]
The CNN documentary "Don't Fail Me: Education in America", which aired on May 15, 2011, followed three FIRST Robotics Competition teams during the 2011 season. The documentary profiled one student from each team, covering different geographic and socioeconomic levels: Shaan Patel from Team 1403 Cougar Robotics, Maria Castro from Team 842 Falcon Robotics, and Brian Whited from Team 3675 Eagletrons.[24]
For the 2013 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, five FIRST Robotics Competition teams and their robots led the parade, with one robot cutting the ribbon and the others shooting confetti.[28]
In the 2014 movie Transformers: Age of Extinction, a FIRST Robotics Competition Robot built by Team 2468, Team Appreciate, for the 2012 Season was featured in Cade Yeager's garage shooting the foam basketball game pieces from Rebound Rumble.[29]
The 2015 Kickoff was, for the first time, broadcast by NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast, and was available via OnDemand for the month of January 2015.[30]
In 2016, Christina Li, a member of Team 217, the ThunderChickens, was spotlighted on an episode of Nickelodeon's The Halo Effect entitled "Hello World". A coding camp that Li organized for young girls was featured on the episode, and 217's robot from the 2015 season made an appearance.[31]
The fourth season of The Fosters (2013 TV series) had several episodes featuring characters competing in a regional FIRST Robotics Competition competition, most notably episode 8 "Girl Code".[32]
In June 2018, HBO aired a Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel episode, which in a segment, the correspondent Soledad O'Brien interviewed Dean Kamen about FIRST and FIRST Robotics Competition and then later interviewed students from various FRC teams.[33][34]
The February 25, 2020 episode of the ABC sitcom Black-ish features recurring character, Jack Johnson, joining a FIRST team—and a cameo by Dean Kamen.[35]
^Merrick, Frank (August 11, 2016). "FIRST on The Fosters". FIRST inspires: FRC blog. Archived from the original on September 5, 2016. Retrieved September 15, 2016.
Intermission during Aim High in Los Angeles, encouraging teams to socialize
The 2006 Triplets of 1114, 1503, and 1680. 1114 and 1503 won 3 regionals each, while 1680 won a silver finalist medal and was a quarterfinalist twice.
Competition at the 2008 Hawaii regionals.
"Barrage", Team 254's 2014 World Champion FRC robot
Crescendo (FIRST)
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