Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian Curtis
Don't get stuck in the robot trap. There are a lot of engineers in the world, and only a very small portion of them do robots for a living. Branch out and give some other collegiate competition a try -- you can always come back to FIRST if nothing else gets you going.
“I think they are a bit over-rated. It’s certainly fun to do — for all parties involved: Students, Teachers, Parents. But robotics is such a narrow slice of the totality of STEM that I worry other dimensions of learning might get sidestepped in the process.” -Neil DeGrasse Tyson on FIRST as a vehicle for getting kids into STEM
(Which begs the question, if FIRST only excites students about robots is it fulfilling its mission?)
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This.
I'd suggest Formula SAE as my favorite of the SAE competitions. There are so many other SAE competitions everyone finds something they like: Baja, Aero Design, Clean Snowmobile, and Supermilage. There are solar powered cars (as mentioned). There is the AIChE Chem-E-Car competition.
A number of colleges have their own competitions. My college had a sumo robot competition and a seek-and-destroy competition, both as classes.
As general advice: broaden your horizons during college, don't just focus on robotics. You might find that you like something else a bit more. I found out that I like building and driving races cars just as much (maybe even more) than I like building robots.
Edit:
As creative and awesome as FRC robots are, they are quite restrictive in terms of materials and equipment. It's an entirely different design and engineering experience when the rules are truly opened up to the use of
anything you can possibly design, build, or buy.