Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

I was thinking, what if there was a college level robotics compeition ran by first?

It could be called like FCL (First College Level). It would be more advanced the FRC, and it will also help college students in engineering classes. It would have a different game then FRC, where you would have to do a harder task. Any suggestions or comments?

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

This kinda sits outside of the purpose of FIRST. FRC, FTC, and the FLL's exist to get kids excited about pursuing STEM careers. Once you're in college, you either are or you aren't. FIRST has either done its job or it can't do much more for you.

Besides, there are MANY nonFIRST things to get involved with in college to satisfy your robotics needs, like real-life research. No reason to make up more arbitrary work.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Maybe if it were fairly different. As mentioned, once you're in college you're either STEM or not, but what you do need in college is experience before you go into the workforce. So if there were a way to increase the difficulty, size, maybe even nature of the game, maybe it would be worth while. But there are however plenty of opportunities such as BAJA racing, research projects, and internships to get the experience you need to go into the work force. I personally would love one, but that's because I love FRC, and I'm completely biased.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

What about fun though?

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

I believe DARPA beat you to it. http://www.theroboticschallenge.org/

Or RoboCup http://www.robocup2014.org/

Or Microtransat http://www.microtransat.org/

Or even good old MATE.

Personally, I think FIRST has been wise to avoid diluting their brand with a college variant.

Consider, for instance... at Championships. Who would have the honour of playing the final match?

Jason

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

I've researched a lot of the competitions that are robotics specific. None have anywhere near the competition experience or iterative design opportunities that FIRST provides unless you can show me I'm wrong. I understand that FIRST's goal is to get us interested in/into STEM education, but once you get here it's a bit disappointing to say the least.

There isn't an opportunity for me to join a DRC team in South Carolina. RoboCup doesn't look interesting to me really. I like NASA's Centennial Challenge Return Rover competition a lot, but I haven't been able to find nearly as much funding for it as say I could with my FRC team. Never seen microtransat before. I seem to think there might be a College Level Vex competition but I don't know much about it and there aren't any College Level events anywhere near South Carolina.

I remember them also piloting some Aeriel drone college level FIRST competition. Wasn't too popular though from what I saw at champs one year.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

For me, it's hard leaving the FIRST community as a student, especially since I have been doing this since I was in 7th grade (2009). You get a feeling that you kinda lost something that was big in your life, and you start becoming less involved because, obviously, it's for the kids. But it is hard watching it knowing you really can't be involved like you use to be.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

I edited the above post after I thought a little more.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

On a more serious note there is VEX U, which while no where near as large ad FRC is right now, is still a good choice for those looking to continue with a program similar to FRC. It is relatively easy to start up a team and the fact that you don't have to figure out how to haul around a huge robot or find storage space for it is rather nice.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

One of the things that I don't like about college-level engineering competitions is that many of them have the same task each year.

Take Formula SAE Racing-
The challenge every year is to build a fast vehicle that wins races.

It doesn't have the variety of games that FIRST offers. It doesn't have the in-depth game strategy or defense that FIRST offers. (Or at least it doesn't seem to. I've never been a big fan of sports or competitions that don't allow for weaker athletes/competitors to win by playing intelligently- but that's a different discussion.)

Many of these competitions are about making incremental improvements on previous designs- many of which are important engineering challenges, and I'm not trying to knock those who do these competitions whatsoever- I just don't find much enjoyment in them personally.

I would love a collegiate version of FIRST personally. I would love a collegiate robotics competition with an open ended game to study and design new solutions for- not a robotics skills challenge.

However, I also think the lack of a collegiate FIRST competition can be good for FRC teams- college student mentors can be a huge help.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

You're right that none are quite like FRC, but if you're looking for a design challenge that at least similar, the closest I've found is the NASA Robotic Mining Competition.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Personally, I enjoy mentoring too much to go work individually on a challenge. A large part of FRCs appeal is getting to teach and seeing those you taught succeed. It would be a bit of a conflict of interest for people wanting to mentor FRC teams but do a college-level challenge.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Why stop at college? A corporate level would be amazing to watch as well. No money cap, no bagging...We could get to see how well Honda's robotics division could face off against Google's acquired Boston Dynamics...Companies have big egos and like to show how much better they are than their competition.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Why stop at all?

We could just keep this robotics thing escalating until we end up like the Tralfamadorians.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

A few years ago they did a College pilot. I was working so I didn't get to see it in action but it had flying robots involved (before drones were available). I think a handful of colleges tried it out. It didn't seem to expand more from there.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

If you really want to continue FIRST into college, mentor or even coach a team. I went from being build captain/driver to mentor, and that is a very challenging transition. Now I coach the build portion of FTC on one of my school's FTC teams, the Loose Screws. If you want something more challenging than FRC but still FIRST, you should try mentoring/coaching.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Another college-level engineering challenge I learned about when Gixxy was shopping for colleges:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EcoCARhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EcoCAR

Also, did you know that the FRC actually is a "scaled down" version of a class Woodie Flowers' taught at MIT?

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't VEX have a college level robotics competition?

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Don't forget about the University Rover Challenge. http://urc.marssociety.org

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

www.formula1.com - Build engines and chassis that go as fast as possible, with fairly game-changing rule changes every 4-5 years. Budgets in the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars.
www.fiawec.com - Build engines and chassis that go fast and last a long time. WEC engineering and tech development is actually _extraordinarily_ interesting these days, with their fairly wide-open engine/powertrain-development rules.

The main constraint on "corporate-level" competitions are:
-They need to be self-funded: No shareholder will ever approve of a company spending their best and brightest's time on something that doesn't have a return to the company. In the case of racing, that return is advertisement and tech development.
-It needs to be interesting to the public: This falls out of the self-funding requirement - you need to be able to attract spectators, which means that you're limited to things that are a spectacle (racing, fighting robots, etc). There is a whole universe of things that are fascinating engineering challenges that wouldn't be viable as a high-budget adult-level competition because there'd be no source of prize money/competition funds from sponsors/advertisers/spectators.
-It needs to not expose proprietary tech: If you're competing with a product that you may someday put out to market, you don't want it publicly exposed until it's ready. Imagine if Simbotics Inc. or RoboWranglers LLC wanted to make a tote-organizing robot for public sale in 2016: They wouldn't want to have us all able to copy it now.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Through high school and FRC many of you have been building robots. Once you get settled into college (or for some maybe after college-- priorities!), you should strongly consider giving back by spending your time 'building' high school kids (or younger) who are building robots. I've never had the chance to participate in FRC as a student, but my best memories mentoring FIRST are not about the best robots I've helped build, the best memories are about the kid's futures I've help build.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Best Business Plan Ever:

Start a collegiate level. Never do a 2001 or 2015 type of game - more like 2012-2014, ever year, period. Don't pay the participants. Get TV deals and endorsements. Fold that money back into the robotics programs.

It'll be a great competition. That is, if anyone even shows up to try to beat Georgia Tech ;). Nanotech FTW.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Challenge accepted.

But really. At least in my case and obviously a lot of your cases. We do volunteer, and mentor FIRST teams. I honestly think I won't ever be able to stop enjoying working with FRC teams.

I'm just saying. FIRST does a lot of things with their competitions you won't find anywhere else. Vex U is close I suppose but I personally like the freedom of parts FRC and FTC has a lot more.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

You don't need to leave the FIRST community--you can mentor in college. You can be just as involved, just with a different purpose. It's really quite satisfying. My son made the transition quite readily. He's mentoring now with his old team, but he'll mentor another team next year (I now open the bidding for a one of the San Jose teams for his services....;) )

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Personally just prefer to extend FIRST into MakerSpaces.
As a friendly competition not armed robot combat.

Why limit it to colleges?

Besides MakerSpaces completely remove the limitations on what the community can do with the tools.
Build FIRST robots.
Build wall clocks.
What's the difference as long as you are learning something and being constructive?

Take for example: NextFAB
http://www.nextfab.com/about/history

"Dr. Malone aspires to reinvigorate American manufacturing by putting the latest computer-aided design and advanced manufacturing technologies in the hands of innovative individuals and organizations, with the training, support, and friendly expert consultants necessary to help turn ideas into products, and products into businesses."

Seems a compatible goal.
Learn how to build the robot.
Learn how to use the shop.
Learn much more than building a robot (sounds familiar).

Imagine the value of FIRST if you continued to have access to what you used to be build that robot?

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

We can call it FCC, but we have to make sure the type of language we use :D

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Correct. It's called VEX U. I've been apart of it for the last two years and while it isn't exactly like FRC, it's pretty close. It's a place to practice and apply what engineering skills you learn in the classroom. Some universities are actually using VEX materials to teach some basic concepts so why not use the extra parts and start a VEX U team? It's slowly growing but it does have a lot of support.

It's been great for me since I mentor an FRC team that does VEX. We're able to work together and learn from one another.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Maybe something with larger projects where college students have to work with students from all different studies in order to excel(ie. aerospace engineers, civil engineers, and maybe even more science and arts students). That would be beneficial for preparing students to work in diverse teams.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

I spent some time over there watching. The combination challenge of an aerial and ground bot working together was rather interesting. Most of the teams couldn't do much of anything.... This was in the pits at Worlds in 2011.

It was originally it's own program called C.A.R.D. (Collegiate Aerial Robotics Division), FIRST was thinking about annexing it, but it was poorly run and poorly supported. Since it didn't meet their quality and branding standards, they jumped ship fast.*

*Source: I started a team that flopped :P

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Among the many great Collegiate-level engineering competitions there are:

http://students.sae.org/cds/
http://www.aiche.org/community/students/chem-e-car
http://www.asce.org/concrete_canoe/
https://www.aisc.org/content.aspx?id=780

And there are many more.

I think that you, like many FIRSTers, are unaware of the many subtleties in events like FSAE. I had one mentor/teacher tell me that he "didn't respect FSAE" which is a horrific attitude (not saying that you have it, just that I've seen a trend of FIRSTers not fully understanding such competitions). The fact of the matter is that it's a very difficult competition (only a small number of cars finish every dynamic event) with a LOT of room for creativity. I know many of the cars look the same, but the variety in engines, transmissions, drive layout, induction choice, tire selection, etc makes all of the cars very different. There is (or, can be) a lot of strategy behind each design decision because of how the point structure is laid out.

Plus you get to drive a race car. If you thought being behind the glass in FRC is a rush...

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

We've had several FRC alumni participate at Univ. Of MN in the American Solar Challenge (http://americansolarchallenge.org/ and https://www.facebook.com/umnsvp?fref=nf)

You get to build a street legal experimental solar powered car and then figure out how to drive it a very long distance (1200-1800 miles) while trading off speed, power consumption and watching weather and maximizing sun exposure.

I think they've also competed in non-US competitions as well.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

But every year it's a race, it's a skills challenge. Which machine is fastest. There's no way to play defense, there's no way to outplay a better opponent.
I have no doubt that Formula SAE is a difficult and dynamic challenge, and I have the utmost respect for the competition.

But I like to participate in games. I've never been a fan of competitive running or bowling or golf- because there's no strategy or dynamic way to play the game differently- they're just skills challenges. FSAE is an engineering challenge, not a game.
(That's also why I'm not a huge fan of Recycle Rush, but again, that's a different discussion.)

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Ahh another Vonnegut supporter

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

I tend to agree with this. The other thing to consider is that if the goal of FIRST is to make an impact in the culture, what better way to do it than to work towards making the program a college sport? Just think about tuning into your local TV station on a Saturday and getting full coverage of a College-Variation FIRST event?

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

I hate to pull out the ol "you'll understand when you're older," but I really didn't understand the truth in this statement until I went to college. It's a big, big world out there, and FRC is really only a tiny piece of it. At first, I wondered how I could be intellectually stimulated without FRC, now, I wonder how I ever put up with the insane hours, stupid inter team conflicts, and all the hard work that never seemed to pay off. I'm glad that I had the opertunity to do FRC, but I'm also glad that I'm taking a break now. There are so many awesome things to do at school that FRC no longer feels like the best use of my short time in college.

Plus, there is a way to do FRC in college. It's called mentoring. And, if you find the right team, it can be exactly the right level of fun, commitment, and involvement to suit your needs.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

I see your point, fair enough.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

They should consider letting the kids have a shot at the game!

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

If you are in college and don't have enough to do, then I am very interested in how you are doing college. As already mentioned, there are a ton of college competitions that already exist, and unless your collegiate team is winning that competition year after year, then you have all the opportunities to iterate that you think you are missing out on. If you want a new challenge every year, do a different club each year. There are so many competitions and challenges that already exist, it would be an unwise use of time and money to make another one, none the less one that doesn't give experience that would be relevant for students' future careers.

Whenever someone says "they should have FIRST in college," I hear "I don't want to try something new."

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

All right. Fair enough.

I hate to break it to you, but it's ALL a game. I'll have to see if my dad will post here, but he's stated in the past that his senior design team (Baja SAE) didn't realize there was a game until later.

And here's why. You are trying to win, no? You are taking a set of rules, and following them, and trying to do better than your opponents. Sometimes, that involves head-to-head competition. But the vast majority of the time, the head-to-head competition is conducted in one-at-a-time or one-man-in-the-arena formats, even in the real world. (I can imagine the competition for a fighter-aircraft contract now if it was full head-to-head... Yeah, not gonna happen.)

So here's the trick: You have to look at the rules, and engineer up your best way of winning the game. If you've seen Spare Parts, or won an RCA/EI/RAS, you might notice that you don't necessarily have to win the engineering challenge to win the game.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Yeah, I used to compete in FRC and VEX and now I am on the University of Michigan Solar Car Team. The World Solar Challenge is across Australia, pretty much from coast to coast, North to South. Sure there a large amount of things I miss from robotics but I am still having a great time and have learned things I would have never learned through robotics.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Almost every FRC student who graduated from our team and enrolled at a local university expressed a desire to return and mentor the team the following year.

Not one of them did. And, frankly, that is a good thing.

They really wanted to, and they really meant to... but their lives changed. Their lives changed because university is different from high school. They had less free time... in addition to more demanding courses, they had to commute to class. The commuting alone sucked up an hour a day from their free time, and the homework and studying likely a few more.

They had new friends, and those friends led them to new hobbies and activities. Many had jobs to help cover the cost of tuition, or volunteered with organizations on campus. They were doing new things and learning new things... exactly what you are supposed to do at university.

The idea of hanging out in the shop until nine or ten at night every night for six weeks simply became unrealistic.

That's why university projects tend to evolve over several years. Students can get involved as first year students, learn what is involved, and then gradually take on leadership positions over the course of their studies. To a high school student, used to a new challenge every year, that might seem a slow pace... but time moves more rapidly as you age. When you are fifteen a year is almost 7% of your life... but at 25 it is only 4% of your life. And it does seem to go by twice as fast!

I've seen this play out in a few different venues... we've had some excellent high school VEX teams in BC carry on as VEX U teams. I admire their dedication, but having a casual chat with one of the team members and looking at their robot I had to comment, "You don't have as much free time as you did in high school, eh?" He had to agree, "We haven't had as much time to work on the robot as we would have liked."

This past summer I took a BCIT team to the MATE ROV competition. In MATE, successful high school teams can move up and compete in the college category. (I think there is a film about that somewhere...) As a high school teacher I was really impressed that a high school could keep up with university teams... but now that I've worked with the college teams I learned that I pretty much had it backwards. Most of the high school students essentially have infinite time and support relative to the college teams... it was summed up most adequately when one of my students was approached by one of the parents there to support a very successful high school team, "So what team is your kid on?" the parent asked.

"My son is at home with his mother." explained my student. "I'm here to compete."

To a high school student, a college division of FRC makes sense. And that's a good thing. But looking back, and taking in the perspective of teaching both high school and post-secondary, the worlds are quite different. Treasure your time in high school, and treasure your FRC experience... but embrace new experiences when they present themselves.

When the time comes to be an FRC mentor, you'll be that much better at it for having a wide range of experiences to bring to the table.

Jason

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

I have been a student in a FIRST program since 2006, when I was eight years old. Currently I am in my Junior year of high school, and I often think about what it will be like when I can no longer participate as a student. It is disturbing really...FIRST has been such a large part of my life, that I will miss it terribly. It has taught me so much of what I know, from public speaking to technical skills. I am looking at electrical engineering and a LOT of extracurricular robotics research projects for college. I think it would be cool if Ri3D became it's own competition, and it was solely for those no longer a student in FIRST.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Being a mentor for a FIRST team is every bit as fun (and then some) as being a student. Don't fear!

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Yes. I was thinking of this excerpt from Vonnegut's (1959) The Sirens of Titan:I first read this a long time ago, although not as long ago as Vonnegut wrote it. It was one of my early inspirations.

It remains one of the foundations of my belief that FIRST is not about building robots.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

You could always become a mentor :P

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

*Cough*Volunteering*Cough*

Seriously though, its one of the best ways to be involved with FIRST during your college years, and it is a total blast working events. :D

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

Im already a mentor, and I volunteer at FLL events, Im just thinking that FIRST kinda leads you up to college, where when your on leadership, you feel like your on top of the world...then you graduate and its a boring as... lunacy.

Re: Should there be a new division in FIRST?
 

I'm pretty sure every volunteer at the local FLL event the other week was a FIRST alumni that attends MST.



I miss vonnegut. I read everything I could get my hands on by him.

Poo-tee-weet?