If you've never had the chance to visit an FIRST competition, I strongly suggest you visit an FRC competition (FTC's bigger brother) this spring in March/April.
The field is as large as a basketball court, and the gameplay is energetic and exciting! I was a student on an FRC team in high school, but the program itself was interesting enough on its own to keep me involved post-graduation. I'm now approaching 9 years of volunteering, with no signs of slowing down. It's a fantastic experience.
Shout out to all the high school teams that put the work to bring in goodies, flair, and time, to show-off the FRC bots in the "pits" to the few visiting little kids around, like my own.
Those interactions made FRC so much more for them, and maybe lit the idea of building something in the future.
I wish (tiny) spectators could sit even closer, but I understand that is a problem of the venue and less of the FRC itself.
I just want to point out for those who don't do FTC how good they were. Here is a link to a summary of all their matches: https://ftcscout.org/teams/8405. Their top OPR (offensive power rating - a.k.a how many points they contributed per match) of 112 is really good. That puts them at 20th among teams who started this year out of nearly 1900 teams. (Although technically the team is older but it sounds like it had all new members.)
As a former FRC judge, and FTC and FLL coach I congratulate you. It is no small feat to just get to competitions as a “rookie” team, and wonderful to excel once there. Thank you for writing about it!
P.S. Don’t forget the scholarships available to you now…
Thank you! We're definitely looking into scholarships and also grants. We also learned that outreach is super important, and have been reaching out to local businesses to spread the FIRST message.
Love it. I did FLL for 2 years in middle school, then FRC all 4 years of high school. I was really lucky to work with some amazing people on that team, and we took a "good not great" team to "fringe world championship contender" in a couple years. AFAIK it's still an elite team today. It was one of the most important things I've ever done. It set me on a path to where I am today professionally, and I learned a lot about how to work in fast-moving ad-hoc team environments.
Although I never committed to my high school's FRC team, the approximately half year I was in it was invaluable to me due to one of the senior students in charge of the electronics sub-team. They realized I was eager for anyone to teach me about advanced electronics and embedded systems. I think most people who joined were hardcore into mechanical or programming, and I was the only socially awkward freshman who wanted to join the seemingly "boring" electronics sub-team. That half-semester of after-school mentoring really added to my motivation and confidence for other pursuits I would later pursue in high school.
Suffice it to say, FRC and other precollegiate STEAM competitions like it are some of the best opportunities I've witnessed for younger people to get hands-on experience with engineering.
Would love to hear more about your experiences with Vex AI! I heard about it quite recently, and was sad that it was introduced too late for me to experience it.
I founded a private Vex team with my friends in middle school, and though we had absolutely no clue what we were doing we somehow managed to bug local coaches enough to get some good advice and figure out a vauge direction to go in. We had no funding and could not afford to pay for a full field, and so rather than forgo an autonomous routine, I wrote code for what I called "replay autonomous," which allowed us to record an autonomous routine using manual driver control on the practice field the day of the competition, then "replay" it without driver input during the competition. Sadly, our team disbanded because we all ended up in different places for high school, but that year is still one of my fondest memories.
Also, curious to hear if you enjoyed FTC or Vex more. I actually enjoyed Vex more, even though I went a lot further while on my high school's FTC team.
As for which competition I like more, I would say that VEX competitions are better run, and it is easier to advance to Worlds and be successful. However, I prefer the freedom you get with FTC because there are a lot more parts you can use, and you have more opportunities to take advantage of custom manufacturing processes such as 3D printing, laser-cutting, and CNC machining.
Power to you next year! FTC was an incredible experience I look back on over a decade later as being not just a great place for technical/team experience but also a wonderful human experience. It's hard to find an environment of people so unapologetically themselves and with such strong sportsmanship. Cherish it!
I will! The FIRST community is incredible - I love talking to other FTC participants around the world to share ideas and collectively improve our robots.
Love to see this writeup, and that you're enjoying FTC! I spent a ton of my time in college leading a VEX U team, and it was a tough but incredibly rewarding experience. It's a lot of fun and made me a much better engineer. It's unfortunate that FIRST doesn't really have any collegiate programs (excluding the mentoring groups that some colleges have), but VEX U gives you a similar experience to FTC with the increased freedom in machining and such. I would highly recommend joining or starting a team if/when you go to college!
FTC is something I learned a lot from and enjoyed immensely in high school. I'm glad you had a great time at competitions, and I have no doubt you'll have some fantastic takeaways for next year!
The level of competition in high school robotics is remarkable these days. I truly believe that the average level of competition is way higher than when I was in high school. I don't envy FIRST's task of trying to make FTC at once accessible (or at least, moreso than FRC) while also raising the ceiling for these talented kids to show off their skills.
The level of competition is insane - many teams utilize industry grade machinery to build custom parts. The skills you can learn translate over directly into industrial robotics.
FIRST was one of my favorite parts of high school and taught me skills and solidified friendships that would really define my life. would def recommend.
Still waiting for a battlebots season, would love to see a bunch of lockheed and NASA funded battlebots go head to head. Incredible wins, I lacked the leadership skills to build a competitive team, our robots were barely useful past being a moveable brick, mostly my design skills or lack thereof.
The Battlebots/Robot Wars metagame got so stale. It was just down to 'put as much kinetic energy into a spinning weapon as possible, and pray that you survive the first impact'
I wish there'd been 'competitive robotics' when I'd been at school in the 80s/early 90s, though. Maybe it'd have pushed me more towards electronics or mechanical engineering rather than focusing so much on coding. But the technology wasn't quite at the point where it became practical.
Should be renamed to 2022-2023 season. For me as an active member of a team I was thinking(when I read the title) that someone is just speculating on the current season theme as it has not been released yet. All we know is that it is called Centerstage and somehow it is related to arts.
‘ FIRST Tech Challenge, formerly known as FIRST Vex Challenge, is a robotics competition for students in grades 7–12 to compete head to head, by designing, building, and programming a robot to compete in an alliance format against other teams.’
Wikipedia
Volunteering with FIRST (I volunteer with FRC) can be a surprisingly fulfilling experience on its own! You still get the excitement of watching the competition, while getting the chance to mentor and support the brilliant young students making their way thru the program.
Many regions also have lots of regular returning volunteers, making the volunteer camaraderie even better than what I experienced while on a team.
You can look into combat robotics (smaller scale version of battlebots). I know of a few FTC alumni who have gone on to compete at different combat robotics leagues. The main league you can look into is the NHRL: https://www.nhrl.io/
There are different weight classes, so it is very accessible.
The field is as large as a basketball court, and the gameplay is energetic and exciting! I was a student on an FRC team in high school, but the program itself was interesting enough on its own to keep me involved post-graduation. I'm now approaching 9 years of volunteering, with no signs of slowing down. It's a fantastic experience.