About FIRST©
FIRST Robotics Competition
FIRST which stands for "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology" helps students and mentors to work together to help solve a problem given from FIRST. The planning, designing, construction and testing are all done within a six-week period, commonly known as the "build season". Each robot designed and constructed must meet rules that FIRST provides in their kickoff event. Each team is given a kit of parts to start with in the beginning. From there on, the teams use anything they can come up with, within the rules.
Who Founded FIRST?
FIRST was founded by Dean Kamen in 1989. Well known as the inventor for the Segway Human Transporter, Kamen came up with the idea that all high school students could design their own robots for a given problem with help from local sponsors and mentors. In addition, Kamen's idea was to have partnerships from business all around the world to support his idea for FIRST.
Competition
Every team in FIRST is invited to attend their respective regional competition. Each regional has an initial fee to register and a date for the competition. There are now 41 regionals within the FIRST Robotics Competition. In addition to regional events, the winners of the regionals as well as the premier award winners are invited to attend the Championship event.
What other programs are in FIRST?
Junior FIRST LEGO League (Jr.FLL)
Junior FIRST LEGO League (Jr.FLL) is designed to stimulate young minds from ages 6-9 with challenging and hands-on activities that will foster an interest in STEM subjects from a young age. Jr.FLL teams have four tasks after they get their topics:
- Learn about it by brainstorming and researching
- Build a model with LEGOS to make simple machines
- Show it with a poster describing their experiences
- and share it with other teams, students
Jr.FLL can be clubs or after-school programs, they meet once or twice a week for 6 to 8 weeks and are formed by the community.
FIRST LEGO League (FLL)
FIRST LEGO League (FLL) is a program designed for children ages 9 to 14 to use technology and science to build LEGO robots to accomplish goals and solve problems similar to those in the Robotics competition.
FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC)
FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) is a mid-level robotics competition for high school age students in the U.S. and around the world. The program grew out of the existing FRC program and has growing ever since. The existing program inhibits every value that FRC stands for and gets the students interested in math, science and engineering for a lower start-up cost.