Canada First

[Tristan Lall]

They are the product of FIRST's first foray into Canada, some years ago. Instead of actually expanding into Canada (like the Canadian Regional ), they allowed a fellow named Bruce MacMillan to use the FIRST name for an independent competition.

CANADA FIRST is an acronym - For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. CANADA FIRST is committed to changing public attitudes about technology, by challenging Canadian minds in fun and meaningful ways. The national and regional competitions are produced by Motivate Canada (1994) Inc., a national non-profit organization.

But that's not the end of the story.

Woburn Robotics competed in Canada FIRST for three years, (before joining FIRST 5 robots ago), winning it the first and second years, with less success in the third.

The reason that we had less success that year was that in licencing Canada FIRST to use the name, someone possibly forgot the "gracious professionalism" part. (I'm aware of the irony that exists, as I use gracious professionalism in the same breath as criticism.) The "old folks" on the team (it was before my time) considered our robot to once again be the best on the field, but thanks to a competing robot that functioned simply as an obstacle, blocking us from scoring legitimately, we were eliminated. We complained about this clearly illegal tactic, but were curtly brushed off. Now you must understand, I'm all for a little robotic contact, but this robot was similar in concept to the half-joking proposal that would have seen robots deploying black curtains over the operator stations, in an attempt to impede the progress of the other team. In this case, it was tantamount to goaltending (in basketball, not a hockey game), and simply wasn't fair to the other teams, who were completely unable to deal with a robot whose sole strategy was to sit still in front of the goal and block the opposition from accessing the only means of winning. You might consider that, therefore, as a dual shot against both the quality and character of some of the opposition, and the quality of officiation.

Apart from less-than-effective enforcement of FIRST's principles, equipment failures and last-minute changes have plagued the competition. A couple of years ago, the night before competition was to begin, the organizers were seen modifying the goal structures at the last minute, by changing their orientation to the field. This was not discussed in team updates (or the like), and came as quite a surprise to the teams who had built robots with a certain design in mind. The old control systems were the cause of some serious issues with the game in past years (this, to their credit, has been improved). Circuit boards would burn up, and robots would lose radio communication, resulting in matches, including the finals being played on tether control.

As for the competition itself, when everything works fine, it's still not nearly as exciting as FIRST is. Two years ago, they effectively abandoned the push-and-shove element by letting the robots compete in a sort of biathlon, with two robots on separate tracks essentially completing a time-trial on parallel segments of track (with small obstacles), and then shooting squash balls into holes in a board. The year before that, in an ironic twist, the hockey-playing robots were designed to fit into a standard Rubbermaid garbage can, as the method of sizing them. Last year, though they brought back the interaction between robots, the task was simply to pick up bean bags and place them into a rotating tower, with colour-coded bins. The disadvantage was, nobody could tell who was winning, because neither the operators nor the spectators could actually see inside the bins to determine their contents!

In summary, we don't really like Canada FIRST's way of doing things, and we certainly prefer the quality of the genuine article. I suspect, from talking to others on ex-Canada FIRST teams, that many of us "darn canadians" feel the same way.
By the way, Canada FIRST had, at last count, about 24 teams last year. That figure is strikingly similar to the number of teams that they had in their first year...I wonder why?
-Tristan Lall

P.S. As for that 8-week build period, I'm not quite sure why they did that (this was a recent change, probably as of last year).