QUESTION OF THE WEEK!!!

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Posted by Ken Leung.   [PICTURE: SAME | NEW | HELP]


Student on team #192, Gunn Robotics Team, from University of California, Berkeley.

Posted on 11/5/2000 3:50 PM MST


In Reply to: QUESTION OF THE WEEK!!! posted by Andy Grady on 11/5/2000 7:38 AM MST:



: Hi all, here is the question of the week:

: Question 11/5/00: What country would you like to see first represented by? We already have a canadian team and brazillian team. Also if FIRST expands how could the problem of language barriers be solved?


Right when I finish reading this question some of the major European countries came to my mind: England, Germany, Netherlands... etc. Then Justin mentioned Japan, and I agree that some Asian countries should be included too: Taiwan, China, (Hong Kong), Korea... etc.

To me, the question is not what countries should join the competition. Because I feel that all the high school students around the world should do something like FIRST. The question should be: How can we let high schools around the world compete together in a competition.

You mentioned language barriers, but that's only the first step. If you look at the World Cup, I think they handled language barriers pretty well, considering every time they had teams from all over the world competing with the language of soccer. So, maybe we can compete in the language of FIRST...(?) The major problem, I believe, is the difference of currencies, measurement system, industrial standards... etc. At US FIRST, we use inches, US dollars, and we order small parts from SPI. I don't suppose we can force other countries to use the same things.

So how are we going to set the rules for multiple countries? I can imagine we will convert between currencies, and I suppose other countries can find companies like SPI. But we will have to look at how the economy will benefit certain countries and detriment others. Maybe we will have to look at how different countries construct the new space station and how they work together.

One thing for sure is FIRST will have to expand a lot in order to held competition across the Oceans, unless we force teams from other countries to come to US to compete. But I feel that as FIRST grow bigger and bigger, there need to have competition across the Oceans, and then we will have the Global competition at a different country every year (or maybe every two or four year due to budget problems). And hopefully by then the governments will sponsors teams to compete in the competitions.

But one question I have no idea how to solve: How can we keep politics out of competition at the global scale, or even continental scale? And how can we ensure that it’s really high school students who are building the robots and not some high tech factories with a team of 100 professional engineers, just because some countries felt the need to win the competition no matter what?