Re: FIRST 50 years ago / 50 years from now.
 

Edit: Scalable well.

According to the District Ranking Website there were 411 teams in MI this year and according to this website, there are about 1500 high schools in MI. I do not know how many high schools are actually covered by those teams (my guess is a good bit more than 400, but quite a bit less than 1500), but it appears to me that MI still has a while to go before it has FRC in every school. I may be incorrect, but the data seems to be reputable.

Even now, the # of teams has reached a point where it appears that more MI teams will qualify for 2Champs this year than DCMPs (source: somewhere in the 2CMPs thread). I can not speak to the impact that team density has had on sponsor and mentor availability right now, but I imagine that there is a point where teams are dense enough to saturate the sponsorship and mentor pools (I have no idea where this point is and I don't think anyone does). I think FRC still has quite a while to go before this issues start to exist, but if we are talking 50-100% of high schools, I think we will start to see some major problems with sustainability.

Re: FIRST 50 years ago / 50 years from now.
 

I'd definitely be interested in a NASCAR autonomous division. Maybe allow code changes during pit stops to change strategies or driving styles.

Re: FIRST 50 years ago / 50 years from now.
 

iirc Every high school in Oakland county has access to a FRC team. Some teams (like 226,68) are partnerships with 2 high schools.

Re: FIRST 50 years ago / 50 years from now.
 

I would also note that the sponsorship and mentor pools do not necessarily scale with the number of high schools or population in general. While there are likely a suitable number of technicians in any given location, the availability of sponsors and mentors for a creative tech challenge is inherently related to the density of technical design and development taking place in the area.

We see this in our own area - while Slidell is certainly no tech powerhouse to challenge Detroit or Silicon Valley, we have a larger proportion of tech companies and tech-savvy federal agencies (Navy, NASA, FDA) nearby than most of the surrounding area. We have no state colleges or universities within a half hour, four high schools, and two solid FRC teams. Just an hour away and about the same distance from Bayou Regional, Baton Rouge has two major state universities, eight times our population, and fifteen times the number of high schools, but only 7 Teams.

Re: FIRST 50 years ago / 50 years from now.
 

The Jetson's boy Elroy: 1963.
Automations have existed long before that.

A large portion of radio and electronics were actually influenced by young people. There are examples of some of that with citations in places like the ARRL handbook.

Keep in mind that automobiles were well accessible to young people even before the 1960s.

My Father attended IBM school as part of vocational education before the age of 20 years old which was during the Vietnam conflict and before he was drafted.

My Father used to work on Sage radar defense systems:
https://www.ll.mit.edu/about/History...nsesystem.html

Re: FIRST 50 years ago / 50 years from now.
 

Though I understand where you're coming from, I meant in terms of computer technology combined with mechanics. The Apollo Guidance Computer, for example, ran at 2.048 MHz and had a memory size measured in words, not bytes.

And similarly along the automobile note.

I definitely should have explained myself better, but edit rules can make one forget.

Tim, KD2KRT.

Re: FIRST 50 years ago / 50 years from now.
 

By the 1970s the PDP-11 was controlling automation in the Mark 1 nuclear reactors for GE (think Fukushima Daiichi). Till 2050 the PDP-11 will continue to provide that function in those reactors. DEC/Digital made something so stable it has outlived their engineers.

I occassionally get requests for support because my first computer was an $80k PDP-11 we bought for a project with IT&T. I am forty years old. My first computer was available to me by age 5.

So roughly a decade later is just a stones throw.

Plus there were R/C airplanes, cars, boats and I have magazines from the 1960s with model train controls made with vacuum tubes.

The actual foresight here is to see it get: smaller, faster, more accessible.

There are parts of the Sage defense computers that took up a city block that exist in the 80386 processor on a silicon chip in the 1990s.

I have always believed that the nuance that high school students can use this technology is not very factual. That age bracket has for a thousand or more years been the mark of the advancement of their generation. As it should be: they will soon be the adults with a world of issues and responsibilities. If we can send them to fight wars, we should expect them to rise to the challenge.

Where FIRST excels is giving opportunity to decades of students to demonstrate prowess without suggesting they simply are not ready to try.

Re: FIRST 50 years ago / 50 years from now.
 

On that, I don't suppose I can argue. My whole goal of that hypothetical in the "50 years ago" was to ask whether the more easily accessible programming and technology would serve as more inspirational, and whether that theoretical trend would continue into the next 50.

However, you did prove very well that the tech was there. As an aside though, would a high-schooler have had access to the PDP-11 at that time? I was under the impression the PDP-11 in it's heyday was mostly sold to universities and companies, rarely high schools.

Re: FIRST 50 years ago / 50 years from now.
 

Missed my edit. I had access to the PDP-11 at the age of 5. My friend Justin's Father worked for Xerox he had access to an early WYSIWYG protoype by age 6.

You could go to IBM school while nearly high school age and I had friends with mainframe access at Universities over modems.

So while many schools may not have had physical hardware: even Sage used phone lines to close the gap between the hardware location and the user's location.

I grew up with my Dad sitting around with a stencil at his drawing board every night. Laying out delay lines and bit slice processors. After the Air Force he designed parts of Time Tran for IT&T Telex. Think e-mail.

There were many young interns. Lots of energy. Looking for opportunity.

Re: FIRST 50 years ago / 50 years from now.
 

Well, thanks for the explanation, and that's very interesting. Is there a chance your friend got to use the Xerox Alto?

Re: FIRST 50 years ago / 50 years from now.
 

What he had was a protype for something more advanced. It never left Xerox as a product. I suspect it was what Jobs and Gates saw on their tour that became the inspiration for the early Apples.

The folks at Xerox had hired a lot of the retiring Air Force talent with an eye for leveraging their experience. Basic graphics were very doable back then with special hardware on a standard CRT.

My Father had an offer from Xerox he did not want to move. So the kid from Brooklyn went back to NYC and 67 Broad Street:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Corporation

Re: FIRST 50 years ago / 50 years from now.
 

NASCAR Pit Stop in that division in 2066:
Battery Fill *check*
New Tires *check*
Damage Repaired *check*
New Code deployed *check*

Re: FIRST 50 years ago / 50 years from now.
 

2056 will finally when a long deserved championship

Karthik will still be coaching 1114 at the age of 75 (not sure his actual age. Just guessed 25...)

148 found another game to make 2 robots that count as one.

Team 71 won their 5th championship

Indiana Districts will have an event at Purdue again.

A game that involves magnets in some way

Team 47 will be resurrected

Woodie Flowers will still be alive at the age of 122

Dean Kamen will provide Segways to ever student (and hoverboards will still be banned.)

Re: FIRST 50 years ago / 50 years from now.
 

Technically, there are magnets in every game, built into the robots. Motors use magnets and copper coils, but I know what you mean. Magnet game pieces would be awesome! Magnet game 2017 anyone? :D

Not to derail this thread, but hoverboards are a perfect example of why LiFePO4 batteries aren't used in FIRST(yet). They are made with undersized batteries and incorrect charging circuits, so the high current draw overheats them(I think) and/or non-balance charging overcharges the cells. There are new smaller Segways which are probably safe.

Re: FIRST 50 years ago / 50 years from now.
 

In 2005, game pieces were suspended via magnets to start the match.

In 2011, lots of minibots used magnets to cling to the poles.

-Mike