FIRST 50 years ago / 50 years from now.
 

I was talking to some of 1257's students about science fiction literature and thought that, FIRST is a type of science fiction. 50 years ago this type of thing could only have been fiction and yet it is. If you were to explain to someone in 1966, 3 years before the moon landing, that teenagers would have the capability do build machines complicated as the work done at NASA, with some equation overlap?

"Teenagers building complicated machinations to compete objectively against others of their kind for a coveted globally-recognized title, as their teams sponsors, each with their own goals and motivations watch from the sidelines. Who shall prevail?"

And on the other side is a question. Where do you think FIRST (and FRC specifically) will be in 50 years? Every home and school? Spanning the solar system? Objectively or wildly fantasy, where will FIRST and Competitive Robotics be?

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

Hover game.

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

50 years from now, the FRC will still be waiting and hoping for a water game. That's my prediction.

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

I hope FIRST never does a water game. The meme is a part of FIRST; don't they dare take that away from us.

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

It would be like Leo winning an oscar all over again

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

I hope that 50 years from now, FIRST is no longer required.

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

I don't think FRC will ever be in every school. FTC/VEX/FLL probably, but FRC is just not scalable to that size.

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

In fifty years we can replay Lunacy.

On the Moon. :)

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

The Google sponsored teams will be totally AI. CD will be discussing the merits of human only competitions to get humans back in STEM.

The mentor vs student built robots discussion will expand to mentor vs student vs robot built robots.

On a more serious note, hopefully the need for programs to encourage women to enter STEM fields will be a foreign concept.

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

Team 31416 will have a really fun PI pun for their team name.

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

Hopefully we will have gone base 16 by then and have 6E23.

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

Avogadrobots will become the new standard that teams will set themselves to.

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

In 50 years hopefully we have batteries that last more than 2 minutes! Imagine all the possibilities! (que transformers capability)

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

I'd rather have batteries that don't weigh 14 pounds, but long lasting batteries would be nice. I can only imagine what other types of cool technology FRC students will be able to use 50 years from now.

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

I predict that in 50 years there will no longer be a bag day. :deadhorse:

In all seriousness, I think programming is going to get a lot easier in the next 5-10 years, manufacturing will get easier in the next 10-15, and beyond that, I'm not sure.

While it might sound bleak, I hope that in 50 years FIRST is no longer necessary and doesn't exist because we as a society have integrated these ideas of valuing science, technology, math, and engineering into our educational system in a more fundamental way and we are preparing students to become professionals who take pride in their work, collaborate across boundaries, and work to raise the level for everyone in the world.

A boy can hope can't he?

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

I predict that there will no longer be a machine shop shuttle driver, as the shuttles will drive themselves. :( I think(hope) FIRST will still exist, but instead of being needed to get people interested in STEM, it will just be "for fun"(for lack of a better term).

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

In 50 years...

We might have actually convinced someone at FIRST that LiFePO4 batteries are a viable option.

We'll have re-standardized on more "modern" 20 degree pressure angle gears.

We're seriously considering issuing the game manual in only metric (but we're still machining everything in imperial).

My team will finally get around to building a swerve drive.

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

Although it may not be necessary, it should still be around. Where else would kids go that want to do extracurricular activities that aren't "the norm". It shouldn't go away, but be accepted just like football/soccer/basketball is right now. Some of the most fun I had as a high-schooler was in FIRST (I also played tennis and basketball).

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

In 50 years we will have grown to the point that we don't just clean out Andymark and Vex during build season, we clean out McMaster.

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

In 50 years, Recycle Rush will be but a forgotten memory to all but those that participated. Those who did will have nightmares and flashbacks whenever they hear the name. Also, districts will be in every US state/region (except for Minnesota) and there will be five championships.

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

Well, this thread is a goner now.

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

CA Districts in 2065, calling it now!

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

Don't give them any ideas...:p

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

Poor MN.. I wonder if I'll see them to go districts in my lifetime.. :(

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

Now that's Lunacy!

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

This post reminded me of watching a video waaaay back when I was junior high about an engineering contest at MIT. So I googled away and found the video on you tube. It was broadcast on PBS in 1985. I think the members of this forum will find it interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9ijA4UBCQ0

I apologize if this video is well known on this forum but based on the number of views I am guessing not.

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

Holy moly that looks fun!! Thanks for sharing that video, I've never seen it.

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

I had no idea that this video existed, and yet... It feels so familiar :ahh:

I can't help but smile at the video.

Also, is that Woodie at 10:44!? That would certainly explain quite a bit.

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

Based on the 3rd image in this gallery: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/4...oodie-flowers/, I'm going to say yes.

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

Okay, so I feel dumb now. At 4:21 it shows and names him specifically as professor. In addition, it was part of their 270 course when he was there... Still though, interesting to see the evolution of the programs that would eventually (hope it's safe to say this) become FIRST.

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

This is a really awesome video, thanks for sharing!

Even in the eighties, driver practice won competitions.

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

FIRST is absolutely an evangelistic organization - spreading the call to make the world a better place through a better understanding and exploitation of the details of how the world works. I am not aware of any evangelistic force that has succeeded so well that it no longer has a reason to exist. FIRST may wind up morphing and merging, but it will never end so long as there remain those of us loyal to its ideals. (with apologies/acknowledgements to J.K. Rowling).

Predicting the future is always a tricky proposition. A co-worker today mentioned how Heinlein had people working in space in the outer solar system with "slipsticks" on their belts. (OBTW, I had the distinct pleasure of showing my son Perry how one works just last night!) As I think about FIRST in 50 years, I realize that (assuming it exists in recognizable form), it will be thrice its current age. How does today compare to 2000, when FIRST was only eight years old?
From 1992-2000, only two games featured game pieces which were not spherical. From 2001 to 2016, seven games featured non-spherical game pieces (I consider Lunacy cells to be non-spheres).
From 1992-2016, only two games featured a game surface which was not primarily horizontal carpet. By 2066, I expect this to be commonplace.
From 1992-2016, only a handful of robots have not had wheels (#71's The Beast in 2002 Zone Zeal, quite a few pyramid climbers in 2012, a few stationary stackers in 2015, and not much else) . By 2066, I expect non-wheeled robots to be at least as common as swerve drive today, probably as common as non-skid-steer today, and possibly so common that anyone who is planning something so old-fangled as wheels will have to think at least twice before posting it on Chief Delphi, and will be considered an absolute genius if it is executed so well that it actually wins some events.

I expect Chief Delphi to still exist, though it will not use technologies readily recognizable to the dinosaurs who were posting to it in back in the 'teens, much less the 'aughts. I'll go 90% on being able to access a thread from 2016, 80% from 2004, and 65% from 2001.

I have very little doubt. While Dean invented FIRST, it is easily arguable that Herb Richardson and Woodie Flowers invented what is now known as FRC through the MIT engineering course 2.70 (now 2.007), "Introduction to Design and Manufacturing". Quite a few of the 3946 alumni proudly tread on Woodie's brick in the 1966 section at LA Tech (known as Louisiana Polytechnic back in 1966, which is oh-so-curiously fifty years ago today).

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

I believe they showed this video (or part of it) when the US Chief Technology Offer, Megan Smith, spoke at the World Championship in 2015. She's in the video, starting at 1:33.

Edit: Found the World Championship footage. Dean's List Lunch 2015, starting at 1:15.

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

50 years from now, FRC is known in Europe as it is in the USA now. We can choose our own regional here in stead of traveling more than one day. :rolleyes:
Mabye we have our own championship, let's hope not though. 2 is enough

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

Championships for everyone!

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

What teams will be able to boast that one of their alum have been president of the United States? or walked on Mars?

FIRST will have some heavy hitting advocates by then.

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

One championship for every continent! Except North America... poor North America having 2..

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

And they will be advocating for a Mars Championship.

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

Some predictions for 50 years from now

-FRC will be larger in Europe than it is today in the US and Canada
-More than 95% of high schools with 1000+ students in the US will have a FIRST or similar (like VEX) program at their high school.
-FRC will adopt a four-tier system similar to FLL to accommodate the extremely large number of teams in North America.
-It is accepted that no one will ever break the OP robotics streak of 23 regionals because almost all first level (as in you don't need to qualify) events are comparable to today's district events.
-The record for the most district event wins in a row will be more than 23.
-Major Powerhouse teams will have a large following of people who were never team members, mentors, or associated with the team in a similar way.
-These teams will earn profits by licensing apparel and/ or other merchandising
-These teams will also have sponsors primarily interested in sponsoring for brand visibility similar to NASCAR sponsors today (albeit for less money and secondarily as a charitable act)
-ESPN and other networks will pay real money to have the video rights to events at the highest levels of play. This will help cover some or all registration costs for the most competitive offseason events. (Think IRI)
-Electronics/Robotics brands will also sponsor events at high levels of play and FIRST itself for brand visibility.
-All events you need to qualify for will have announcers/anchors talking about the prior match and the next match similar to how they do it at IRI today. This will make watching only one live stream more entertaining.
-There will be a weekly match highlights show produced in a similar fashion to NFL RedZone. By adapting it for FRC the major difference will probably be a longer delay. This will allow for people to effectively watch FRC recreationally when there are hundreds of smaller events going on at once.
-Fantasy FRC will be mainstream, not as big as fantasy football, but still offered by major fantasy sites like ESPN. Many people will play for money.
-There will have been multiple end games that have required flying minibots
-Chairman's wins at super-district championships (third level of four) will consistently do more than what our hall of fame teams currently do
-Dean's list will have more than 4 levels compared to today's three
-Almost or all dean's list winners will get a full ride to the college of their choice
-The total value of prizes excluding scholarships for those who win will exceed $30000
-The second highest level of dean's list (today's Dean's list finalists) will receive prizes similar in value to today's winners
-FIRST will have almost achieved its goal of sufficiently achieving recognition of Science and Technology within the US and Canada. Most efforts will now be to achieve this in other less developed countries.
-FIRST will pursue closing the gender imbalance in other countries more than in the US and Canada.
-Almost everyone will know what you are talking about when you reference FIRST as a noun
-IRI or the comparable event 50 years from now will make IRI this year look like childsplay. People will look back at footage from stronghold and think about how simple FRC was back in 2016.

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

I'm also predicting that a town a team is from will tune into their regionals and cheer on their team. If the team does well, they will be welcomed home by a victory parade put on by the town.

Imagine the whole city of Cleveland, for example, celebrating 120's championship victory. That would be pretty cool. There may be some intense neighborhood rivalries in the same city, though. (For example, half of San Jose cheers on 254, while the other half cheers on 971.)

I'm also hoping sports bars will tune into regionals, DCMPs, and Champs when they're happening. That'd be fun.

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

In 2066 to accommodate the changes in gameplay and robots, the fields are now 27 by 54 by 81 meters. Teams will be complaining auto is too short and the 20 second teleop should be eliminated as most robots do nothing on the field due to the mandatory lack of any automation software during this period. The Great California Earthquake of 2045 devastated the California teams and the major nexus of elite teams are now located in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

The Non-Newtonians’ (Team 49033) Gravity Lens has received massive complaints as being cheating and FIRST is considering banning any devices which affect the force of gravity. Prohibiting Morgan Gravitonics devices are also being considered. The rules are being adjusted to prohibit weighing any robots while the equipment is on. About half the teams struggle to accomplish the flying portion of the game and continue to use ground only robots.

Teams chafe at the 32 terabyte/s bandwidth limit as this reduced their holographic HUD robot POV interface. Teams are also clamoring for transitioning from magnesium air batteries to lighter weight higher output Minovsky reactors for powering the robots.

Additive manufacturing techniques have become common and some mentors complain we have lost the basics by not doing things the hard way by CNC. Material Advances in new alloys and composites have forced FIRST to reduce the weight limit to 80lb as otherwise the robots would be too large and too powerful. Teams complain about the limitation of motors that can only output 465 NM at 40k rpm.

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

Dang...That's quite the prediction.

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

At first, Michael's prediction seemed to be pure pessimism, but then the reason emerged in this thread:

It took 20 years after the quake of 2045 to establish the infrastructure needed to hold FIRST district events in California.
On the plus side, the split between NoCal and SoCal districts became obvious. ;)

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

Maybe not a FIRST-specific thing but something to look forward to in the non-combat competitive robotics scene in general...

If marketing proceeds towards making things big, I'd see things becoming like other sports (FRC becoming almost a feeder of sorts? See: NASCAR, F1)... in more ways than one. (See: Battlebots. Less technical focus, more "ooh something different") Televised events, people not involved directly having heavy investment, larger corporate sponsorship. Formalized leagues with engineers being drafted (IMO, would be rly cool), etc.

Technologically involved mainstream sports are nothing new (NASCAR, F1).

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

FiM begs to differ.

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

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

In 2050 Aerial Assist is replayed with 2 tethered drones in the airspace at the center of the space station "Epcot" back in the rotating park module in orbit around Earth. Most of the guests will be remote from their homes. FMS will use standard quatum entanglement burst transmissions such that latency is virtually irrelevant (determinism is a novel concept found irrelevant to quatum physics by 2031 and sooner or later we have superluminal communication without voiding relativity).

Literally my moonshot ;).

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

That's definitely a 2065 technology right there.

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

Hey....problem too big in time too small?
No slacking :p.

This joke can be appreciated on multiple levels :D.