Is FIRST a robot building CONTEST?

[Steve W]

FIRST is an egg. What is he talking about you ask. Everyone looks at an egg and knows that it is an egg. BUT what is an egg? It consists of 3 separate items of which if you took 1 away it would no longer be an egg. Each one is a totally different part, each one is needed, each one brings the egg to be what it is. I would suggest that the robot competition is the shell of the egg. The reason is that once the shell is removed you find the life force of FIRST. The inspiration, teamwork, life experiences and much more. Is FIRST a robot building contest? Is an egg the shell?

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by cbolin

(...) So, from the perspective of a lot of us mentors and students its about building a robot that can compete...having fun doing so and keeping the kids excited about it even when our bots don't do so well.

A better question is this Ken. Is FIRST a robot building CONTEST for ADULTS?
I have attended four competitions now and have noted that over 1/2 of the teams have adults (mentors) programming, repairing, modifying, coaching and strategizing. Many instances, the kids are just standing around watching.(...)

Right on. The goal of every team ought to be to train students in the technical and program management skills they need to run the whole team themselves. With only a couple of returning students, we were essentially a second-year rookie team this year. Next year, adults will do a lot. I was proud of them at the tournament when they fixed one of our mini-disasters without any adult help. Our other mini-disaster required an adult to help (no time + whirling blades = the adult did the cutting). Next year, my goal is to wander around the pits drinking coffee, chatting with other idle coffee-drinking mentors.

[Yan Wang]

Originally Posted by Steve W

FIRST is an egg. What is he talking about you ask. Everyone looks at an egg and knows that it is an egg. BUT what is an egg? It consists of 3 separate items of which if you took 1 away it would no longer be an egg. Each one is a totally different part, each one is needed, each one brings the egg to be what it is. I would suggest that the robot competition is the shell of the egg. The reason is that once the shell is removed you find the life force of FIRST. The inspiration, teamwork, life experiences and much more. Is FIRST a robot building contest? Is an egg the shell?

FIRST is like Shrek which is like an ogre which is like an onion, which has many layers, I think he means to say

Personally, I think it is a robot building contest, but the contest is not between different teams, it's between team members and themselves. The six weeks is the most important and longest part of FIRST. The challenge to engineer a robot with a large group of people is a contest to see whether a team can act like team - to learn, to teach, to listen, and to do. The competition celebrates the build period, but it's not the real contest. By the time you've finished the 6 weeks, you have a darn good knowledge of whether you've succeeded at participating in that contest. You don't need a regional event to tell you that.

[Adam Y.]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Exactly. FIRST is about teaching kids about engineering and getting them interested in it. I fail to see how this is possible without a robot. Or without some other form of engineering challenge that we'd be discussing instead of a robot.

It's actually quite easy to get kids interested in science without having them do anything. All you tell them is look what you can do with science. Heheh.... Even I couldn't believe that it's possible to dip your hand really quickly into liquid nitrogen without anything happening to it. Even Asimo generated a larger response then I would have imagined. There was probably enough people to see it to fill an regional.

[KenWittlief]

the contest is not between different teams, it's between team members and themselves...

I like this view. the teams I have been on we set objectives for what we wanted our bot to do, and we measured our success by how well we accomplished those goals.

I think its impossible to 'win' by shear determination and resources, because there are so many variables in the game. To begin with, you are now allied with two other teams at random, so you only bring 33% of the cards to the game. Winning a match has more to do with luck (like winning the lottery) than skill.

If I can give an example, the year I was on the Xcats, the Fairport team could not get a critical gear they needed in time for the Cleveland regional. Their robot did not move an inch in any of the seeding rounds. Purely by the luck of the draw, they were allied with excellent machines in many rounds.

The Xerox/Xcats team had a great robot that year, a large team, excellent funding, but at the end of the seeding matches the Fairport team with its non-moving robot was higher in the ratings than the Xcats.

I dont relate this as an injustice, but as an example of the amount of luck and chance that is involved. I took a good deal of good-natured ribbing from my mentor friends on the Fairport team that year. I think this illustrates that the 'contest' is only a means to see how well you did in designing your machine, not a fair and level playing field to see which team can build the best robot.

I need to point out the other functions on the fairport bot worked great that year, and they did get the gear they needed for their next regional, and were part of the winning alliance their next event. So from their persepective, they did very well that year.

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by Steve W

FIRST is an egg.

So which came first, the robot or the competition?

-dave

p.s. More cogent thoughts later, along with a very relevant anecdote from a discussion with a team engineer/mentor during the first two weeks of competition. I want to see where this thread goes.

[Stephen Kowski]

who cares what it is or will be....all I know is that I'm addicted and it is a great time for everyone....scoring problems will always happen, but if we stay with the same system and never make any changes/take any chances, the whole competition (or whatever you would like to call it) would get dull and no one wants that....keep up the curveballs FIRST....

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by dlavery

So which came first, the robot or the competition?

When you can snatch this Victor from my hand, grasshopper, then you will be ready.

[Billfred]

The way I see it, FIRST is a contest. A synonym of the word, competition, is in the name of the event. In this contest, you build and compete with a robot that was built by the team.

So strictly answering the initial question, yes, FIRST is a robot building contest.

However, there is more to it than just building a robot--if there wasn't, you could pretty easily eliminate about half of the awards out there...Imagery, Website, Sportsmanship, Team Spirit, all of the Autodesk awards, Engineering Inspiration, and Chairman's.

Therefore, my answer is that yes, FIRST is robot building contest. It is also far, far more than that.

[JoeXIII'007]

FIRST, since its beginning has been a work in progress as all things are. You can never really expect for every team to get the main focus down of FIRST. Besides, at every competition there is a tournament. To translate, it is to robots like the North American International Auto Show is to cars and the Electronic Entertainment Expo is to video games. You have your first-party, second-party, and third-party developers working for each group. In no group will you find the perfect individual company or group for the respective genre.

FIRST emulates this real-world situation beautifully. You have teams that keep FIRST alive, either providing excitement to the game at hand or spreading the word to lands in which this concept is foreign territory, or they're in between.

It is this emulation that provides a great learning experience for all, no matter how much they know already. So, it is a robot building contest, but in a real-world sense.

[Daniel Brim]

First of all, before I begin, I think FIRST is what you make of it (I think I borrowed this from a spotlight). The below is my interpretation of FIRST, and is by no means the only interpretation of FIRST.

Personally, I do not believe that FIRST is simply a robot building contest. As it has been stated before, the robot is merely a "by-product" of the competition. We build a robot because FIRST tells us to. A robot is just a way of giving us inspiration, and I believe that everyone can be just as inspired with another object. Say the goal was to build a car. Would it be harder? Of course. Would FIRST need more engineer involvement? Yeah. Would teams need more money in order to compete? Most likely. Would everybody be just as inspired? You betcha.

FIRST, by definition, is a competition, as was stated before. However, it is not a normal competition in that it is every team for themselves. FIRST is so much more than that. Just look at some anecdotes from previous seasons, such as six hour robot (everybody descending on a team with no robot's pit and build a robot in six hours). This is were the whole cooperatition idea comes in.

In addition, there are so many things to do in FIRST besides actually building a robot. That is another reason why I think it is impossible to define FIRST as simply a robot building contest. There are chairman's award people, animation people, PR people, Inventor people, NEMs, and many other positions that I'm sure I have forgotten.

Here is sort of a story from our team proving that you do not need to be working on the robot to make a difference in a FIRST team. One member of our team (you know him as DCA_Fan or George) has not really worked on our robot at all in his four years as a Beach Cities Robotics team member. This does not mean he is not working; in fact it is the exact opposite. In his work with our Chairman's entry, our website, as well as the website for SCRRF, he has made just as much as an impact as any other team member, if not more. It was largely because of him that we won Chairman's in the Southern California regional last year.

Me personally, I only touched the robot twice this year. One day I attached the drawer slides on our arm, and the other I tried my hand at driving. The rest of the season I have been working with Inventor to try to expand BCR's horizons as a "robotics" team. I like to think that I'm making a difference not only on our team, but in Dean's scheme to change the world.

In conclusion, I think that the fact that the Chairman's award even exists is enough to prove that FIRST isn't just about robots. If this was solely a contest, who would care about changing the community? Making a positive impact in the community and inspiring is truly what FIRST is about to me.

My 2 cents are in the pot, and now I eagerly await Dave's story.

-Daniel