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U.S. First 2001 Competition Begins 84

Posted by Hemos from the let-the-games-begin dept.
Borodir writes: "Technically it's just FIRST now, but this is an awesome competition for high school students, in which they build robots that compete at a national level. Over the last couple of years, this competition has really been growing, they now have over 500 teams. The idea behind the competition is to encourage students to go into some form of engineering, the students even write their own code for their robots. "
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US First 2001 Competition Begins More

US First 2001 Competition Begins

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  • I know it's a competition for geeks, but they could make their web-site slightly more engaging

    Wait a minute,
    http://www.usfirst.org/whatis.html [usfirst.org] is (c) 1996 ...

    Perhaps they need a competition for someone to write an 'include footer' for their site...

  • As a two-year veteran of FIRST, I can say it's a fun experience and interesting to watch. This year's contest doesn't seem that competitive though, it's a 4v0, so i don't get to destroy Texan robots... :(

  • EE, CS geeks need not apply (Score:3)

    by slashdot-me ( 40891 ) on Sunday January 07, 2001 @04:55AM (#525256)
    No electronics, no software. You'd better be a mechanical engineer, welder, or machinist if you want to participate. All the interesting parts are handed to you in a little plastic box. Budding EEs will have to be content with relays and limit switches. At least that was the story when I competed 5 or 6 years ago.

    Ryan
  • I agree, maybe we could get the audience to join in along with it...
  • I was active in the '98 and '99 competitions, and what you say is 100% true. This competition is mostly about the mechanical engineering stuff. However, I was the person who worked on the coding. It was rather interesting what you can do when you program the interface between joysticks/buttons, and a mechanical device. With my team, myself and one other guy put a lot of work into the code, and came up with some pretty neat stuff. However, our hands were tied beyond a point, as it is mainly a mechanical competition.

    You can code some pretty neat features that ease operator burden, but you can only go so far. The provided microcontroller is based on the Parallax Basic STAMP II, and you run into it's limitations (32 bytes for variables, no interrupts, slow execution, no negative numbers) very fast. 2/3 the effort in coding routines was spend figuring out how to make them work on the thing.
  • The only problem with the FIRST competition is that they force each team to purchase a kit from them. After buying their kit and any extra parts (from them of course) the robot alone ends up costing $15K. Add the cost for travel and other little things and it ends up costing $30K. This requires corporate sponsership which means that instead of building a robot and playing with cool stuff, you spend 90% of the time writing letters to companies.
  • Apparently the kit has changed a bit over the years (not surprising). When I competed in 95 and 96 there was no software. The controller was literally a black box with terminals to hook up the motors and a few jumpers to configure limit switches and such.

    Ryan
  • for those interested in that kind of things there is a large scale robotic competition (with fully autonomous robots). Engineers schools and universities are the competitors, and it's mainly based in europe, but the world finals include MIT and some japan schools i think. The only site i know of is there (little english flag top left of the page) : http://anstj.mime.univ-paris8.fr/~robot/concours/2 000/coupe/france/
  • When I did FIRST in high school, we got almost no support from the school, financial or otherwise. Our teacher spent enormous amounts of his own money on it. We were partnered with a local (15 miles) university, and because we didn't have and weren't given the resources at the high school, most of the construction work was done at the university. This made it very difficult for those of us still in high school to participate heavily; Quite a few couldn't drive, and those who did have a license weren't always able to get their hands on a car from their parents. In addition, the university made it an actual class, so they had dedicated time in their schedule; For me it was an "extracurricular."

    As a result, I felt like an outsider no matter how much time I put into it. I never felt like a part of the team doing the project.

    As it turned out, the college students & our teacher did most of the work in design & construction. We got little say in what went on. When it came time to decide who would drive the thing, it came down to myself and one other person (because very few other people would committ to making the weekend trip to New Hampshire); The college students were given the decision, and they picked him over me because they'd seen him more. Well, gee, sorry guys, I had things outside this project to do. I held off on getting a part-time after school/weekend job (which I needed, to cover the costs of recently getting my driver's license) for this project, apparently that wasn't enough.

    When it came time to go to the competition (there was only one event at the time, not the regional/national thing like now), very few people from my school went, again because of lack of support from the school; They counted it as an absence against me, and there was no assistance in paying for hotel rooms. Even worse, only a couple of the college students went, and they're the ones who knew everything about the robot because they were given free reign (as explained above).

    A few years later, my brother got involved with FIRST at the same school. By then they'd gotten a corporate sponsor instead, the high schoolers were put in the driver's seat, and I think everyone was much more interested because they were able to actually do something.
  • I participated in US FIRST/FIRST my Junior and SEnior years in High School and must say that it is an absolute great competition. (Not to mention getting out of school to go practice driving the robot)
  • Last year I took part in CanadaFIRST [canadafirst.org]. Thats right, not affiliated in any way with FIRST but still a robotics challenge none the less. I have to say that on the team I was on the students did all the work, we had one mentor that helped us do what we wanted to do in the machine shop (none of us had experience) but he never told us what sort of thing we should be building.

    The team I led last year will not be competing again even though we came third becuase of political squabling between the two schools that worked together and lazy teachers. This is a project I'm willing to give 20 hours a week for 8 weeks and it will not go ahead because some teacher does not want to give 6 hours a week. I'm hoping to get it going next year but it looks doubtful.

    The conclusion to this rant is that CanadaFIRST exists, it is a lot of fun and lots can be learned (even if there is no CS or even EE stuff mechanics is fun and working in a group with a challenge like that is very rewarding and educational to say the least), politics and laziness will be getting in the way of 15+ students for enjoying this.

  • I participated last year and even though I didn't work on the control system phase, it wasn't as simple as it used to be. Our programers had to do a great deal of work in order for all the control to work just right.
  • I don't know about the FIRST competition in the states, but up here in Canada the "Canada FIRST Robotics Competition" was one of the biggest scam I have ever participated in. The first time I participated was when I was a junior in high school, and coincidentally the first time our school has ever compete in this competition. The result was dissapointing for our school, but my enthusiasm for robotics made me want to go back to the competition the next year. So the next year, we organized ourselves, started a school recognized club and got ourselves a teacher sponsor, with the determination to win this competition.

    Little do we expect, when we acquire the application package it tells us that we need to hand the Canada FIRST people 5000 dollars just so we can compete in the contest!! It turned out that this entrance fee is used to buy the materials and parts the organization provides us, and our team did not pay for it the previous year because it was waived as the "first time entry deal"! The news was such a shock to us; it had already been almost half of the school year, where were we going to fundraise 5 grand in 2, 3 months? The school obviously was not going to give us any money(it was a huge school), and there were no disgustingly wealthy kids in the club that could spit out that kind of money.

    Furthermore, the so-call standardized parts the organization provides consist of such things as 3 regular, dc powered motors, a rc control kit (including a modem) more or less a generation older, and the 2, 3 batteries they provide so that we have a standard power supply. Everything else such as wheels, wires, gears or other materials were not provided at all which means we had to go out and buy those things ourselves. All the parts provided add together would hardly cost over 1000 dollars in my opinion, consider there were no custom made components or anything like that. The robots were to be remote controlled, therefore there were no programming or any sort of logic or microprocessors involved. So where does all that money go? Afterall this organization that's responsible for the event is non-profit?

    After contacting some of the other schools in the region, we reached to the same conclusion. Everyone we contacted were obviously having problems with this, and no one could explain to us why such a astronomical fee was required for entrance. Needless to say when the deadline came we did not have enough money to enter, and we all came to the conclusion that this whole competition is a scam. A look at their website at http://www.canadafirst.org confirms at least the very business-like attitude of the organization; very rich sponsorship for the competition, the selling slogans of "turning technology into sports". Despite what the page says, the nature of the competition seems much less about science and technology and more about business and sponsorship and "the use of World Wide Web"??? The two testimonials(seem like a lose-weight ad) are nothing about the actual competition but about the use of WWW and another contest called the Science Wave.

  • I don't know if its just a western States event but My nephew participated in www.botball.com [botball.com]. He ended up competing nationally in Austin, Texas this year.

    Everyone is giving the same kits but they are built out of legos with the Mindstorm modules for programming. I was really impressed at that amount of detail that has to go into these robots! You compete against another team on a playing field thats about the size of a ping pong table. You have a raised field in the center where you and your opponents ping pong balls are located. There is also a tray at the center of the table. When the light goes on one of your two robots trys to capture the tray and your second robot has to position itself to grab all of its ping pong balls from the raised playing field. (your robots had to fit in a virtual box before starting so usually to get the balls you have to riase the robot). Then you need to get your robot on the tray that hopefully your other robot captured.

    I don't think the cost of entry is anywhere near 15K either.. I will ask my brother if any costs came out of the students pockets, but I don't think so.
  • But this competition is remote controlled. Check it out. [usfirst.org] Wireless controls, wired controls, joysticks, etc.

    Steven
  • I've done the competition twice, 2 and 4 years ago. I'm now EE at the University of Michigan. Though the competition is heavy on ME, and those guys always get the glory, there are some nifty EE and CS problems to be addressed. On the CS side, there's control. The defaul package is ridiculous. They give you two joysticks, poorly coded, with most of the buttons non-functional. It takes half your control mechanisms simply to drive the robot! We had a great time writing code that would take the input off 1 joystick (an x-value and y-value between 0 and 255) and convert them to values for the left and right tracks (again, between 0 and 255), without going negative at any point. Our first year, we were one of the only teams that used a single joystick AND could push a little up and to the left and have it result in a gentle arc. We wrote subroutines that automated certain tasks. Remembering, the entire time, that the processor in our little, white box has virtually no cycles to spare. Every line of code we wrote slowed down the overall performance of our robot, which is frustrating, when you REALLY WANT to turn left, but you have to wait for it to finish checking the limit switches (those ended up being disabled in the national competition).

    EE is indeed harder, doing the control and feedback is the extent of true EE work. But I'm in my 2nd year at a reasonably difficult university, and I can't imagine requiring teams design boards or, in fact, any of the equipment they give us. FIRST is a general engineering competition, and it's amazing. If you own a company big enough to front around $25,000 to support a team (and trust me, that's the low end these days, we did it on $10,000, and it was tough. The big teams, like Motorola, it's rumored, will spend upwards of a quarter million dollars) go to your local high school and find out if they have a team. We took finished top 50 on 10K, top 25 on 23K, and last year (I'd already graduated), they finished top 15. It's a great was to support every kind of engineering, EE and CS included. (sorry, that last part was because this post was getting a little off topic).
  • Awww yeah, new rules are up, and there is a team meeting today at 3:00. For the next 6 weeks school, work, and our social lives get put on hold while we design, build, and (hopefully) test our machine. At the same time we need to be making a 3d animation, raising money, trying to market our team, etc. This competition isn't just about building a robot, for our team its about running a business. And this year, our business is gonna make a robot to rock all of you!
  • I think that, originally, FIRST had good goals - trying to get high school students excited about engineering/science/tech the same way they get excited about sports. So they provided an arena for friendly competition, and an atmosphere that would appeal to tournament style play. For those that haven't been, there are like 10K kids running around, loud music pumping, several rounds going on at a time, so there is a tournament like atmosphere.

    But corporations have taken over FIRST just like they've taken over everything else. The finals are on ESPN, so they invest gobs of money/effort into the projects. I think the worst part is that, you look around the pit area, and you see adults hovered around the robot, and the kids that are supposed to be learning and getting involved are off screwing around in Disney World!

    Even worse, it seems the corporations pay the kids to be loud and obnoxious and show of the company logo. One group I remember from Chicago marched around the area yelling, screaming, waving Motorola flags and chanting "Team Motorola!" Another group passed out flyers to everyone in the stands that said "Check out the FIRST finals at your local GM dealer." And I think FIRST likes the money its generating, so they're not gonna put a stop to it. I just thought it was sad how the kids were getting used.

    When I was at the Univ. of Iowa, I helped the local high school do FIRST for the first time. The students are given a $250 budget (which they're not supposed to exceed). So its a great engineering project - get a task done with a limited budget. And our kids got so much out of it! But they had no chance of actually being competative. How are we supposed to compete against JPL engineers, for cryin out loud? The motto we adopted was, "Early elimination = more time in Disney World."
  • I had a teacher who participated in this FIRST thing -- Evidentally it was a part of this big school-sponsored robotics program

    I've heard a lot about this, I saw it in the newspaper, in the classroom, and now on Slashdot, but I think one of the flaws of the program is its inability to let people know exactly what the competition is -- I understand they are building these things blind?


    Seeka
  • BEST [bestinc.org], or Boosting Engineering Science and Technology is a competition started in Texas (blah) for students up through their senior year in highschool. The principal is similar - you are given a box of electronics, and a palet of predetermined parts (plywood, fly swatters, sponges, some metal, glue, etc.) and six weeks to build you 'bot. The contest and some of the parts change each year, the parts being somewhat predictable, but the contest being about as random as it gets.

    The process for competition works like this: one "hub" (local competition area) is given the task of making a game for the year. Then it's released at synchronized kick-off meetings to all teams. From that date, you've got 6 weeks until local competition. If you place in that (either by placing in the competition or the BEST award), you advance to state/nationals (it's still basically state because most of the hubs are in Texas, but some are as far away as Chicago).

    For reference, I'm on the Medina Valley High School [k12.tx.us] Robotics team. Click on MV Robotics at the top, and don't believe everything (anything) you read on the schools front page except for the part about the corn :)

    Note: Kickoff for next year's competition is scheduled for early October I believe. I also apologize for our website - our school district gave us some real hassle about it so we never had a chance to truly refine it.

    CAP THAT KARMA!
    Moderators: -1, nested, oldest first!

  • That's only as true as you want to believe it to be. Yes, the kit itself costs $5,000+ but you can get your unlimited parts (sheet metal, fasteners, etc.) from just about anywhere. Small Parts Inc. is it's own company, not a FIRST company, so they are not your only option when it comes to purchases. But aside from the basic kit you can build a reasonable machine for way less than $30,000. The last time I participated (3yrs. ago) me and 6 other high school students built our machine in a room the size of a small office with little to no access to a machine shop. We also didn't have money coming in from a huge corporation and still we had a working robot for the nationals. It's like anything else in the real world: there's always going to be people out there with more resources and you just have to deal with what you have. And even if you have next to nothing you can still have a good time and compete.
  • Anyone have a mirror up for the docs? Our team(and probably other teams too) are having trouble downloading the docs from the crappy first server.
  • I agree. The FIRST website is very plain and the information is either hidden or not all there. They use PDF's (sometimes very large ones) for all info and it gets to be a pain. They should update a little bit (3.0 browsers at least?), add more contact and FAQs, maybe some webboards.
  • Well, mail them and propose to help them with getting a better website up. It would be nice to see the results and get some bulletin boards working. Don't just complain, but scratch your itch.
  • It's good to hear that high schoolers are doing something useful with their time other than sitting around and smoking pot and pulling fire alarms. I remember a few years ago when the only time students could compete on a nation-wide basis was with the designing of web pages for scholarships.
  • It appears everyone else on here had a bad experience. Well, I'm a senior in high school, and have participated in it since my school started it (My best friend was the one who brought it to the attention of our science teacher). It has been one of the most fun and entertaining experiences I have had! I completely forgot that it started until I read the article. I can't wait now. And Several other people were talking about no support from their school, etc. We get excellent support. Our new principal (er, was there last year too) is very excited about it and tries to get as much funding from the school district as can. We have massive teacher and student interest. The only reason we only have 30 students out of a student body of 1400 or so is because of the time involved. It is also generally very well accepted as far as the rest of the kids who aren't in goes, and no one really gives us the nerd treatment, plus many of the baseball and football players and many other "popular" students are in it. But the experience of getting to work in every phase of the design of the robot is fun, from brain storming to crafting our own parts out of steel and aluminum to programming the control unit. Its very eye opening to see the engineers struggle on it too!

    So I don't know about these people who say it wasn't challenging, or it wasn't fun. If you think it wasn't challenging, then get off your high horse and admit it was. When you have professional engineers that work for Lockheed, Nasa, and 500 -person engineering firms have trouble, then you know its challenging. Either that or they stuck to they're programming, and didn't get involved with anything else, and well, who's fault is that?

    That last paragraph will probably start a flame war, but hey, I'm just telling it like it is!

    Blake
  • As a 4 year participant, I will agree that it does cost a nice sum of money to join, and go to many regionals. But costs can be kept down. Mnay teams do it on less than $20k, others spend over $100k but they host regionals, my team, 111 Wildstang [wildstang.com] spend a decent amount of money, and we do well because we have huge student participation.
  • A few years ago in high school, I had to do a similar Panasonic robot competition at Liberty Science Center (an awesome place on the east coast of New Jersey, if you're ever out here).

    The goal was to design a robot that would grab onto a 50 foot piece of string hanging from the Liberty Science Center's upper ceiling, carry a payload of an egg to the top, and be first to get the egg safely to the bottom without cracking it (while still being the first team to do it).

    Most teams had set up advanced ways of carrying the egg both up the string and down, so they simply had to roll the egg out when they made it down. This was safe but incredibly slow.

    My team's solution was to use tiny egg parachutes, and carry our 3 egg payload (we were supposed to do 3 all together) all at once. What a revolutionary concept!

    Except, when we launched the device, it proceeded to go up the string, and launch the eggs out several feet from the landing area, be carried by the air coming out of the air conditioning ducts, and land on several exhibits on multiple floors of the building. The curators of the museum were not pleased.

    Needless to say, we didn't win. But we had the biggest laughs when other people were awarded prizes and trophies.

  • Actualy FIRST is an enganging competition for all types of geeks. There are so many sub prizes and sub competitions it is crazy. Not only are students used to handle most of the logistics of transporting some 30 kids and sponsors to and from mulitple out of state regionals, there are 3d rendering contests, web design contests the robot needs programming and needs to be wired. Also there are contests for team spirit so even the nerdiest of the cheerleaders have been known to show up. The three years that i have participated in this contest have been great and i have learn so much about everything. it can almsot be compared to each team being its own comapny that has a product that they have to "sell" better than all the others. FIRST has become and awesome competition and i encorourage ANYone who has the desire to be part of this for ANY role that is required to please give this a try. ALSO and big part of it is coporate sponsorship so if you or someone you know is in charge of your companies taxes or funds please sponsor a nerd and give money to your local FIRST team, i am sure they need it. (and its a tax cut too... w00t)
  • I totally agree with you. As I mentioned in my post above, the last time I participated my team consisted of 7 high school students. Absolutely NO help from experienced engineers. We made a really decent robot, but it was a huge reality check when we got to the competition and saw so many expertly designed robots built by professional engineers. The idea behing FIRST is definitely getting lost in many of the teams competing lately, although I'm not sure how something like this can be easily regulated.

  • As a reporter for my school [k12.mi.us]'s newspaper, I've done a couple of articles on our FIRST team. Here's a mind dump of everything I can think of:

    • Local corporations like X-Rite [xrite.com](hq is in our area), Rapistan [rapistan.com] and Delphi [delphiauto.com] act as sponsers and provide engineering assistance and advice.
    • Students of all specialities can join. There are Physics-whiz, math-whiz and english-whiz people sprinkled throughout.
    • Students of all ages can join. There's everything from Freshman(youngest turned 14 this school year.) to Seniors(Oldest turns 20 this school year.).
    • Non-students can participate. There're teachers, administrators and parents that enjoy helping out.

  • I agree...I talked to a couple team members (and my girlfriend, who happens to be on another team...could get ugly :)), and they are all very disappointed. Cheering is going to suck because all you can do is scream the positive "Go! Get those balls in the weird lookin tube thing!", instead of hoping the robot opposite you is going to tip as they speed up the ramp. I wish they would drop the coopetition stuff and go back to how it was a few years ago, where it's every robot for themselves.
  • I have done the FIRST robotics competition for 2 years, and before i join my team i was going to be a vet. once i was done with my two year stint in the competition i am now on my way to get my engineering degree at cal poly pomona. the one thing that the students of thew competition need is money, they don't have time to make a lot of mistakes but they do and it costs a lot to do so. so if you have a spare time or money go down to your local high school and help them out in anyway you can...and as a side note i am going to go back to my high school and teach engineering. :)
  • No electronics, no software. You'd better be a mechanical engineer, welder, or machinist if you want to participate. All the interesting parts are handed to you in a little plastic box. Budding EEs will have to be content with relays and limit switches. At least that was the story when I competed 5 or 6 years ago.

    Well, I can't agree with you on this subject. I was part of the FIRST Team in two years ago. We traveled to a few competitions but mainly in Philadelphia and Flordia. Me and 2 other computer geek friends were there for documentation. We took pictures with the Maverica camera, we did the website, we secured a website to pass information to other team members (private and public, and yes advocates, we used Linux). While we didn't work directly on the robot itself, we did spend a lot of time on the computer side of it. Everything from tech supporting the Drafting people when they had problems (NT pooping out during 3dmax rendering etc) and even setting up majordomo for a news mailing list. We did the GIMP/Photoshop graphics of all the sponsors we had...

    OF course I guess my situation must have been a lot different. I was in a vocational school during high school (Half at the normal high school, rest of the day at the vocatioinal school studying computer maintenance... I competed in VICA for those that know what that is). We did almost all of the work in the school itself. We had welding work on the welds and the robot was mainly built in our Electromechanlical/Robotics classroom lab. The Drafting class did the mpegs for that 'contest'. We even had carpentry build us the cart. It was a good experience I must say. I have tons of pictures from the event, I'll toss them on a website if anyone really cares to see them. Here [neplug.org] is a picture of the "stage" which the robots would compete on at the national competition. As you can see, it was right across from Epcot in Disney... Pretty interesting and exciting. So if anyone actually wants to see some of these cheesey pictures, drop a line to hades@nospam.psu.edu and remove the obvious...

  • Yup, my high school sent three teams to botball. We didn't do two well the first year; our two teams tied for last place. :\ But the second year, we got to go to Orlando where we took first place in the national competition. That was really fun.

    If anyone is interested in the source code we used on our robot, it's under GPL -- just let me know and I'll send you a copy.

    It's a great contest. Teams can compete on only $2000 sponsorship, and travel is paid for to go to the nationals if you suceed at the regionals.

    Though I didn't realize they had switched to mindstorms. When I did it they were using Fred Martin's Handy Board and Interactive C.
  • Just as in everything else, now it's US First. Egocentric Americans. :)

  • I always wanted to sneak a BattleBots-style robot into one of the robot firefighting competitions. The robot starts up and out pops a saw-blade or whirling chains. It just demolishes the whole maze/house. Maybe the whole thing catches fire and burns down. Sort of in the spirit of the old Obfuscated C Code Contest's "Best Abuse of the Rules" award.

  • Getting glory for the controls stuff is indeed much more difficult than expected. On my team (#179, Swamp Thing) we put a lot of work into the control system and had lots of different features. Multiple speed modes, adjustable torque/gearing control, auto-torque limiting, closed-loop positioning, and automation of many things that other teams left to manual control. We even had a fancy manual describing our whole system and it's usage.

    In the 1998 competition, we lost the controls award, but felt no grief. Why? The team who won it had done everything we did, and then some. They deserved to win.

    In 1999, however, we were really angry that we lost. Why? The awary was totally misjudged. The winner was cited for a creative robot idea (being able to climb over other robots), and not an innovative controls system.

    Another dissappointment is that the nature of the 1999 competition did not allow us to "show off" our nifty new features that would have blown people away on the '98 robot, but were developed too late to be of competition use that year. (such as complex closed-loop arm control)
  • "http://www.canadafirst.org" Just FYI. I'm co-leading my school's team this year (western canada high, Calgary, Alberta)

    This year there's 27 teams competing, so it's on a decidedly smaller scale. This seems to have benefits, however. We are by no means corporatized. No, really. In fact we need more sponsors. We need another $10K before February or else we have to fly the team down out of our own pockets. And forget about fancy metal work, this baby's gonna be made from wood; anything conducts if you try hard enough.

    Anyhoo, this year's 'robotic sport' for Canada First is the robotic biathlon; not quite, but almost, as dumb as it sounds. The events are going to be held in TO on march 1-3, and if we're luckily the Discovery Channel we'll cover us again.
  • I find this interesting, as I saw things moving in that direction over the two years I participated.

    When I first participated in '98, everyone was involved. The team was basically a joint effort between the engineers and the students. This works especially well when you have young engineers (recently out of college). Everyone felt a sense of pride in the project, and felt like they were part of it. It also took lots of time, as I basically spend every evening and saturday for 6 weeks down there in the workshop. I mainly worked on the code, but I also helped with the rest as needed. I even got to be one of the driver/operator people that year, which was pretty cool. :)

    In the '99 competition, however, things changed. It seemed like the engineers (mostly the same ppl) decided to cut the students out of the loop. We were given a sense of participation in the begining, but it degraded over time. We only met a few days a week. The engineers tried to do most of it themselves, and seemed to procrastinate about it. I still worked on the code, so I was involved. However, most of the students (a mostly new group) didn't seem involved at all. I felt a lot of bitterness between myself and the engineers that year. The students were generally less self-motivated, which could have partially led to it, but the lack of veterans kept most of them from noticing it.
  • Canada FIRST, the canadian assosiate of US First will have shooting in this year's competition. This year involves a biathlon where first the robots must navigate a course to arrive at a shooting range with targets. No real bullets though, just squash balls.
  • No it's not. Botball is run by KIPR, which is totally independent. It's a completely different competition.
  • Yes, but the default program on the robot end of the control system needs to be changed a lot to be useful for most robots. Making it autonomous would be too much for most high schools.

    Aaron Plattner
  • It is true that Canada FIRST will cost alot to attend (this year 8000 to enter +1000 for parts + travel (21000 for our team this year :0 )) but it is an excellent experiance. The money is mainly used to transport and renting locations as far as i know. As well, the top 8 teams get to put their robots on display at various science centers (including the possibility of a international convention in Korea this year :). Canada FIRST helps to subsidise these costs (not sure if they get the money from private sponsors or the 8000 though :| ).
  • Yeah... This year's competition is a mixed blessing: No one robot can do all the tasks, but on the other hand, no one robot can do all the tasks. There was a real sense of competition before whereas now you are forced to work with everyone. I liked last year with 2 vs. 2 much better because there was both competition AND teamwork.

    Aaron Plattner
  • Actualy, in last year's Canada FIRST robotics competetion, the 2 teams from our province (state), Newfoudnland, came in 1st and 6th place despite engineers from top firms such as Bombardier and Spar Aerospace sponsering and helping other teams. Just goes to show that anybody can make a killer robot if they put enough time and effort into it.
  • Most non-rookie teams have learned that they have to start fundrasing long before the kickoff. Also, once a team has found a large corporate sponsor, that sponsor us usually kind and interested enough to sponsor them the next year as well. After two years of struggling for sponsorship, we have gotten great support from Rockwell who provides money, resources, and engineers to guide us. FIRST will always be an expensive competition because it requires many more resources (and plain old mass) than your run-of-the-mill high school clubs.

    Aaron Plattner
  • Yeah. IMO, that really needs to change. Teams with student-designed and student-built robots really spoke out last year, and I think that if more teams proclaim the fact that their robots were designed and built by students, we shouldn't really need regulation. Although, there will always be teams with company-built robots, but hopefully they'll become a minority.

    Aaron Plattner
  • This guy is talking about Canadian FIRST and I think you're talking about US FIRST (At least, I remember a Wildstang team from US FIRST before). How long has Canada's FIRST been around? It sounds to me like they're either underprepared, just getting started, or a real scam. (Their website is certainly better-looking than US FIRST's [usfirst.org]).
  • Yeah, I remember that. That was fun! By the way, you do know we're sponsored by Rockwell now, don't you? The guys at Rockwell are great though. We get to use Rockwell facilities and we were actually competitive last year and are hoping to be even better this year without becoming a totally Rockwell-run team. Not all the large sponsors are bad. I do agree, though, that the teams where none of the students know how the robots works are pretty sad.

    Aaron Plattner
  • And it's the biggest medal I've ever seen! Lots of pennies in those things...
  • I believe this is the eighth year of CanadaFIRST, maybe the ninth. Our school had similar fund raising problems, however the oganizer of the event helped connect us with Celestica, and another member of our team managed to connect us with several smaller companies, with the net result that we scrapped together enough money for the enterence fee about four days before it was due....
  • Long-ass kickoff video too, eh?

    Missed last years, but two years ago had a lot of fun at the contest. I think it's more fun when there's more interaction with the other robots, unlike this year's, although I must admit it's actually a pretty cool idea. I remember in the curling tho, placing blocking stones and such.. it was fun.

    Good luck to you guys out in Calgary, hopefully see you at the competition....... (give Unionville a cheer when we're up)
  • See, I don't know if I am just a poor university student but making high school kids to raise 21 grand hardly seems reasonable to me. As far as subsidising, when I participated they only did that if it was your first time entrance. So from that angle it almost seems like it's purely a promotional thing...

    Again, you said this year it takes 8000 dollars to enter. Where does this money go to? Renting the place? I hardly think that's an issue considering there are so many alternative such as high school assembly halls, gyms or such would cost so little if nothing. As for the staff, how many staff do you need for such a competition? I would bet a lot of engineering professionals in the community would even do it for free, just to encourage the young people and making a good cause. (I know the people where I worked in the summer certainly would) It's this unexplained spent of the fees that made us come to the conclusion that this is in fact a big scam, and not worth of wasting our effort to. I suspect that also how some of the other teams that I spoke to feel.

    (Actually me and my buddy were thinking of creating our own competition across Ontario(where I live), with a fixed budget(not 21000 or 8000!!) and some simple standardize components such as the RCX from MindStorm or perhaps some surplus materials. Does anyone think this is feasible or have some idea to contribute?)

  • I'm a second year EE, I build robots for my school's robot team (UT Austin), etc. We were even approached by a local FIRST team for help, but they couldn't tell us what we could do to help them (being as they already had commitment from the Mech. Eng. department, who would dwarf any mechanical help we could give). Judging by some of the responses, we could've greatly helped with the control systems and such, as it's not entirely mechanical any more. With that said, I don't think this is entirely a bad thing.

    In the robots we've built, mechanical systems have typically been an afterthought (until this year). One of the robots that's been in the works for about a year has a wretched drive system. Motors are plenty good, wheels are plenty good, control system and power systems are plenty good. But the interface between the motor shafts and the wheels sucks. So I'm in the process of turning wheel hubs out of 6061 Aluminum and fixing it.

    In short, it's not good for EEs to view all other disciplines as unholy (well, all other engineering disciplines, anyway. liberal arts and business are unholy). Even in doing EE sorts of things, like etching printed circuit boards, we've had to have knowledge of chemistry, and how to do mechanical things (like cutting photosensitive boards without fscking up the copper or etchant layers). I've recently been acquiring tools, such as a drill press, band saw, grinder, bench sander, MIG welder, a tap and tie set, a nice drill bit set, etc. in addition to my already existing electronics tool sets. For our newest project the mechanics are a whole major section of the project, and are being done first, and done right, with everything laid out before any building starts, just like anyone would do with a circuit board or program, and not as an afterthought.

    We don't want a bunch of EEs attempting to build robots after they graduate from high school where the control systems are crippled because the mechanical systems won't/can't do what they're told. Being exposed early to mechanics is good for so-called budding EEs, although I will agree that the competition should maybe add something extra (while keeping the magical US FIRST controller box), perhaps for bonus, so teams who want to explore designing and building their own circuits can go down that path, at the risk of neglecting the rest of their design. I was personally disgusted when talking to that ex-FIRST team member (he graduated) last year, and he couldn't tell me what sort of CPU was being used, or anything.
  • When I compeated last year I was the lead programmer. We got around the variable limit in two weeks. EEPROM use it. All you had to do was read the stamp training kit.

    We had all sorts of automation. All our drivers had to do was drive the bot, and tell it kinds of activities. It was lots of fun. I would advise anyone who can join a team to do so.

  • GO to cheif delphi for bbs. That is where most of the MI teams go.

  • This page [canadafirst.org] states in small print at the bottom that "The national and regional competitions are produced by Motivate Canada (1994) Inc., a national non-profit organization."

    It would be interesting to do a freedom-of-information request and get their financial details. How much they pay their president and staff, etc etc. Not all "non-profit organizations" are created equal.(*) Some do a very good job paying their principal employees (often founders of the organization), satisfying the minimum federal requirements for non-profit status, and that's about it.

    The fact that this is in such small print and almost barely mentioned, that the 'people' and the 'who' is behind it is not so clear on the website, leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth.

    I wouldn't want to be involved. I wouldn't want the company I work for involved.

    And their website is good, but it's not impeccable. It's got a "splash page" whose entry-hyperlinks are almost un-noticeable. I ended up doing a google search and then finding a link into the pages from there. It was only after I went back out to the splash page and HUNTED that I found the parts of the image that were clickable.

    (*) - Now there is a good social studies / law class / school newspaper project. An investigative report on this non-profit organization. An expose. Heck, even verifying that they *are* an officially listed non-profit organization.

  • Now, being a 4 year veteren(or rather, this is my fourth year), if you want to be a CS, you have to make it up yourself. Most people have crappy control systems. If you want, create a slick one, or even create some automated features, such as fuzzy logic for making sure the robot doesn't tip over, or something else specific to your robot. It's only as good as an opertunity as you and your team make it to be.
  • Ya, the robot-to-robot intereaction years are the best :) Last year's hockey was great; there being small, quick, manuverable ones playing with big ones meant to fight/check for the canada first puck. Can't wait to see ya all in March (us newfies are determined to keep the Spar Aerospace Award, and hope to have alot of fun doing it :P)
  • I'm not really sure I agree with that. Admitedly, forcing them to completely re-engineer the parts they are given and come up with a new design in the alloted time is unrealistic. But if a team is allowed to start completely from scratch? No kits, no pre-fab parts? Just a machine shop and Radio Shack, breadboard their designs and do away with most of the size/weight restrictions(within reason). I bet we'd see some great innovation. Perhaps walking robots instead of the old theme of the triangular base and extendible pincer. I'd rather see the robot kit done away with and the money and energy put into a robotic design software package to allow people to try a lot of _new_ designs before they head down to the machine shop.
    When I first heard of this program and I heard that students could design their own robots, I imagined spider-legged robots with either vacuum based tubes for the years when they use balls, or conveyor belts for the years when they use innertubes, that would do away with the need for tactile sensors and the tricky programming needed to maintain just the right amount of pressure and simplify that aspect of the robot's design. This would allow for more and more creative ways of handling the mobility and terrain sensing issues. Some kind of laser sensor like a barcode reader for direction and proximity alert. Maybe even a form of sonar.

    We need to stop crippling the next generation's imaginations. Do away with all these kits and pre-fab solutions. Teach them the principles of mechanical and electronic engineering and don't teach them any design methodologies beyond the basics. We'd probably be amazed at how advanced their solutions would be.

    Steven
  • I'm in involved in this, and all of the programming is in BASIC. It's very annoying, and there doesn't seem to be a real time clock on the device. If someone would care to hack the Innovation First [innovationfirst.com] (which is based on the BASIC Stamp II SX microcontroller, with a Scenix SX28AC/55 chip - a chip which should support ASM) controller board so we can use C or ASM, it would be much appreciated. It's a shame that the FIRST doesn't try to encourage more the programming side of things, since software is an integral part of robotics. [parallaxinc.com]
  • The kit which was supplied last year (for the 2000 contest) contained both the mindstorms RCX brick controller, as well as the Handy Board (with Interactive C). Thus many teams built two robots, each independantly controlled - it would have been nice if a radio transciever had been included so that the two robots could talk to each other...

    The Handy Board is annoying though, it doesn't have a real time clock and the software timer isn't accurate at all - the speed of the software timer is proportional to the current provided by the battery.
  • The kits are really not pre-fab robots, and the size and weight restrictions are there more to make the competition fair and prevent people from pouring money and/or power into their robots than they are to restrict students. Even though the kits contain all the same parts, they're mostly things like motors, wheels, and wire that any robot is going to need anyway. Very little re-engineering is required. If it were entirely up to the students to make the robots, most teams would come to the competition with duct-tape-and-string robots while others would have things that looked like NASA projects (the good ones, not the ones that spontaneously died).

    Aaron Plattner
  • (FIRST veteran) You have to power this thing with *only* the wiring given you in the Kit of Parts - this makes for some interesting power budgets - you can't just plug-n-play what they give you. Also, the box and controls ARE configurable - the plastic box is made for them by Raytheon, and it IS programmable. Course, it doesn't run *NIX, so some in this millieu will find it beneath them, but you can't just wire switches to the radio net and make it go.
  • If you are an engineer of any sort, get with one of these teams. I'm a veteran FIRST team leader and coach. It is far and away the best program for getting kids psyched about being geeks (that word is used in FIRST by the participants with ringing reverence)

    It promotes the design of robust solutions to a unique problem, and in the past few years has stressed cooperation between teams - distancing itself even further from Battlebots etc - which also have their place.

    I've seen more kids head towards sci/tech from this program than any other single program in 21 years of sci/tech education. The professional engineers, to a person, say this program is the thing that reminds them why they got into engineering in the first place. A fresh challenge and 6 weeks to go is the antidote for too many engineering jobs - twiddling the last 1% performance per year out of whatever thing you're working on.

    Plus, someone asked me what the regional competition was like after we returned. I told them that it was the first time in 17 years of teaching that I had to sit down and put my head between my knees because I was about to pass out watching my students do something academic. And I'm the most laid-back guy on the staff.

  • blind? hardly. they all get the game rules and kits on the same day, they all have to pack up a finished robot the same day 6 weeks later. many schools scrimmage before they ship. this year the level of cooperation is such that many teams will probably publicise their robot's abilities - something that was unheard of in FIRST three years ago.
  • Those generalizations are not the norm among the teams - sounds like you were victims of pretty lousy leadership, cooperation and team attitude there... opportunities are what you make them. Remember, - the winners in 98 were a small mom-and-pop engineering firm with a local high school. They beat JPL and all the other NASA teams and big corp teams. The corporate support makes sure teams get financed, and these are the companies that will someday benefit from these proto-engineers. (What - are kids going to come out at the end of an EE as itinerant street engineers?) The best teams DO involve the kids at all levels. The best teams have enough drivers and coaches so that they can spell each other and the kids can still enjoy the tournament and its setting. Yes, it's expensive, but it's a drop in the bucket from what schools spends on sports. Not that it's a guns-or-butter argument - but think of it this way: there's a 1 in 40,000 chance that some HS kid will make $100K playing pro sports. On the other hand, there's a million $100K math/sci/engineeering jobs (that's 50 FIRST/Disney tournaments) in the US available to these same kids. Which way do you want to bet?
  • There is a general feeling at my high school that the handy board will no longer be used; many groups in our city (Norman - home of the Botball National Offices) have found that the batteries that the handyboard use have gone bad. The batteries are stored in a proprietary-pack that you have to special order, so it's quite annoying and potentially expensive to fix. (There may be a simple solution to this; I haven't seen one yet, though.) When we went to the national competition we left the handyboard back at school and just used the RCX. I believe that the RCX, even with it's limited processing power and versatility, is a better platform for programming bots. The RCX handles motors better. The problem we had with the handyboard was turning an exact angle - but as the bot was used, power would be drained, and the time it took (the only way we could control the motors) would lengthen. Very knotty problem! The RCX was better. Additionally, the RCX has several different languages that can be used, support for different OSs, and support for multiple programs on a single block
  • Oops, I guess you're not an engineer. This program is not designed to create new researchers in the robotics areana, but to inspire students to enter the engineering field. Deadlines, the use of existing materials and technology, and restrictions on what can be done is at the heart of engineering. We, engineers, seek practical solutions to problems using actual parts. Yes it would be great if we could get high school students to invent the next generation technology but we have to remember what the goal of the program is: to inspire the next generation of engineers. If you would simply donate your time to inspire the next generation you would discover that the challenge is great. Tell me how you create interest in creation of new technology with the next generation, otherwise blah, blah blah.

  • I have to agree! I participated with a team from Fort Collins, CO and the most important goal for the engineers was to let the students do as much as possible. We, those engineers that participated, all agreed that the students would conceptualize and build the machine and that we engineers, would help where ever we could. I actually felt sorry for those teams that were dominated by the engineers who thought they were creating the next generation of engineers but instead made sheep. To lead means clear the path that others can be great. I hope the students of Fort Collins High School read this and know that I wish them great luck and that the future is theirs to create.
  • My impression was that this was a money maker for the FIRST company that makes the RC boxes, the starter kit was about $1500, and pretty lame.

  • I'm hoping we can grab that one that's a model of the Avro Arrow. That's the coolest looking award I've ever seen.

    Sounds like the teams from Newfoundland did a bang up job last year.. congratz :)
  • ehehe wow, should've thought of this earlier, but how long do you figure it would be to drive from toronto to st. john's?

    that would be one cool trip...
  • It was meant to be a pun, you know... :)

    Though perhaps it was a bad one.

  • Thx. If you got a fairly innovative design and do a nice engineering panel presentation you could probably grab it; performance in the competion doesn't factor majorly into winning it :)
  • He i go on something similar every year :) The shortest route would be (starting from St.John's): St.John's to Maryland Ferry = 2.5 hours; Ferry= ~12 hours; North Syndey (Nova Scotia) to Quebec border = 9 hours; Quebec to Hull (Ontartio) = ...think its around 6 hours, not sure though Hull to Toronto, = not sure exact eithet...3 hours???
  • I participated in BEST through our school's local chapter of JETS (junior engineering and tech society) out of Taft High School during 98-99. The competiton is basically "here is a box of parts and here is your goal, see you in 6 weeks". At my school the teachers that sponsered us basically were just there so we could use the schools facilites (labs and shops) and to provide us with idea's and help if we needed it, and it provided a situation that is completely student driven. it was a fun experience and i wish i had gotten involved before my senior year.
  • Oops, I guess you're not a creative engineer. My point was to give them access to resources which would allow them to break the model of "whoever studies what the previous winning teams did and improves on it the most wins" into "whoever designs the best robot, original or not, wins." But since you chose to ignore my main point and started the whole thing with a personal attack, you can just FOAD.

    Steven
  • I understand that they're not pre-fab robots. But I've read a fair bit of the material and looked at the results of the competition. The robots are all pretty much variations on the theme. A heavy base with an extendible arm and using a pincer to manipulate objects.
    I agree with the point about motors and wires. But I question the inclusion of wheels in the kit. I think encouraging creativity is more important than solving the problem. Sure the most creative robot might not win, but it starts a thought process in tangent to normal thought and THAT might be the next great advance in robotics. A longer time to build and a simulator program to test a great many designs would foster more creativity. The wide variety of robots created for more free-form competitions speak for themselves. I just wish they could get the kind of mindshare that FIRST does.

    Steven
  • Having been a mentor for First and judging for First Lego League, I just couldn't let this comment stand.

    There are 2 different competitions. The High School League and the First Lego League.

    The High School league involves making a robot, that is about 3ft x 3ft x 3ft, from stock materials (basically anything you can get at a hardware store.) Everything a team uses on a robot has to be documented and on an approved list of materials. These lists are used to keep the teams on an equal footing. The list for electronics is very small. But there is some real work to get all the electronics you want, with what you are allowed.

    You do need to program you robot. Robots are tele-operated and run from 2 joysticks and several discrete switches and buttons. The processing is done by a basic stamp but First provides a control module that gives you DACs, and PWMs out of the Stamp. First gives you a basic program that will run everything but not very well. A good CS person can do a lot to make the robot run better based on changes to the code. Most of the work would be in low level control code not in high level AI type stuff.

    The competition that really impressed me was the First Lego League. The competition is for middle school age kids. The teams make robots out of Legos using the Mindstorms RCX box as a controller. These robots are autonomous. The kids program the robots to do different tasks. Once the robot returns to a certain section of the playing field the kids can change the program and reconfigure the robot. This competition really requires some CS skill. Here the teams are limited to the parts that come with the Lego Robotics Inventor Kit. Judging this competition convinced me to go out and buy Mindstorms for myself.

    With both competitions the real key is have a coach (and/or mentor) that really leads the team. When I judged the PA state finals you could tell the difference between a team that had a coach that did nothing, a coach that did everything, and coach that guided the kids but left that actual design and choices to the kids. The kids with a coach in the last category, were having the most fun and learning the most.

    Beyond coaching, the kids get out what they put in. If a kid decides he wants to program, reads up on what he can do, how he can do it, and then does it, he can fill the whole time doing CS type stuff.

    If you are interested in using robotics for education or are in middle or high school and are interested in robotics take a look at http://www.rec.ri.cmu.edu/education/ [cmu.edu]
  • I actually e-mailed the guys and found out that there was a real time clock available in the software. Here's what he said:
    FYI, the Handyboard has a real-time clock in it which is accessible from the software. You can read it, reset it (it resets when the board is reset) etc. As the batteries where down, the clock timing doesn't change, but the motor speed does changes as the batteries where down. The U-shaped slot sensors make good wheel encoders when combined with the LEGO disk that contains six holes. This disk fits in the sensor's slot and can be used to count wheel rotations. Several teams did this to calculate where their vehicle moved.
    In addition, it seems that the handyboard this year will have a new addition: A Polariod 6500 Sonar Ranging Connector [handyboard.com], which would sit on the expansion board. Hopefully we'll get the use of this this year.
  • I live in Dallas Texas. I was the team leader at our high school in the '97 competition. The robot is now parked in my garage, sans thousand dollar remote control. We rigged up some controls on a tether, and it wouldn't take much imagination to make it remote controlled again. This was the "Toroid Terror" year, so the 'bot has a claw on an extension pole, extends to be about ten feet high, collapses to be about three feet high. Ours was the "General Lee, team 183". Decorations and plexi-panels are all still there, looks great except for the dust. The best offer will be accepted. Email cknox at tamu dot edu if interested.

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