About FIRST
For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology
FIRST is an organization founded by the Segway inventor Dean Kamen and MIT Professor Woodie Flowers in 1989 to encourage students to pursue a future in engineering and technology fields.
FIRST's philosophy of collaboration and teamwork among engineers, teachers, and mentors with their students and encourages those students to get hands one experience with various robotics programs as well as develop a genuine interest in engineering and science fields that the world desperately needs. FIRST holds a variety of robotics competitions that simulate sports, however FIRST as an origination greatly pushes for competing teams to remain friendly, helping each other out when necessary, and never promoting winning over leaning and fun. This is known as Gracious Professionalism; a term coined by co-founder Woodie Flowers that supports respect towards one's competitors and integrity in one's actions. FIRST is all about fun and learning, where they encourage everyone to get involved somehow.
Below you can learn about the individual robotic competitions FIRST holds, or you can go to their own website to learn more about them.
FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC)
The initial year FIRST developed a robotics competition and called it the FIRST Robotics Competition. It's focus was to hold FIRST's philosophy of developing a student's interest in engineering and science fields through hands on fun with teachers and mentors all while maintaining a Gracious Professionalism. The FRC program is aimed at high school students who, with the help of mentors who can be teachers, engineers, or any other volunteer, compete in a robot played game on a team. Teams are given numbers with larger numbers meaning the team is newer to FIRST. Teams are given six weeks in FRC to design, develop, and create a robot that is capable of playing the game FIRST makes up each year. Robots are radio controlled by human players and competitions also allow for an autonomous mode where only the robot can control itself.
FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC)
In 2005 FIRST, inspired by the rapidly growing success in their FRC program, created this program; however it was originally called the FVC. FVC was an initialism for FIRST Vex Challenge, but was renamed to the FIRST Tech Challenge in 2008 when the kit or parts was changed. The FIRST Tech challenge is similar to the FIRST Robotics Competition in most regards, but is scaled down to reduce the initial cost and knowledge overhead. The main goal of FIRST's FTC challenge is to bring a smaller version of the FIRST Robotics Competition to younger high school students who may be intimidated by the comparably more complicated FRC. The FIRST Tech Challenge is intended to also help bridge the gap between the middle school oriented FIRST Lego League competitions with the smaller Lego robots, and the large complicated robots in the FRC.
Instant Translation
About
Team Member Login
Follow Us
