FIRST Robotics WAY in the future

[JesseK]

I believe that any sustained robotics-related program in a school is a win. Robotics covers so many STEM areas and gives students a glimpse of how STEM applies to the world around them.

FTC or VRC are more attractive to most school admins since there is a major element of reuse. VRC has more reuse, but FTC has a more open platform. I know locally many schools have taken advantage of VEX's classroom kit since the teachers cannot stay after school in some cases.

FRC isn't for every school; it takes a lot of drive just to fundraise every year. It is a premium program that requires a premium about of effort to sustain and be successful. And man is it fun to do.

[gblake]

Building on what Jesse wrote, many people who puzzle over what STEM robotics looks like in the future love what FRC does for the students who get hands-on time doing something (almost anything) for the team. That hands-on time might be designing/building/testing the robot, or strategizing and driving, or writing an annual business plan, or ... But, they also often come to the conclusion that FRC teams/programs can/should be one of the capstones on broad-based pyramids of diverse STEM programs, instead being the first or only solution to be used in every high school (or Scout troop, or 4H Club, or ...).

When a community creates a broad and deep pool of regular-season and off-season, school and non-school, adults and students participating in programs like FLL, VEXIQ, FTC, VRC, BotBall, BEST, PLTW, OOTM, etc. who then feed into the right number of FRC teams; they have a resilient, sustainable result that can give thousands of students opportunities that match their diverse needs at reasonable costs, and that can reliably give some number of those students (and the community) the sort of high-quality FRC experience they want and deserve.

How many FRC teams should exist per 1000 eligible students in a region?
How many VRC teams?
How many Air Force Association CyberPatriot teams?
I'll leave those questions for another day.

Circling back to the original question: I believe that you will get more mileage out of envisioning a hypothetical future in which nearly all USA (or Brazilian, or German, or Indonesian, or ...) students can tap into a thriving suite of STEM programs; and then pondering how many communities might choose to include an FRC team or two as *one* of the jewels in their crown. 100%? 20%? 50%?

Blake

[Grey Mann]

If FIRST ever got up to 20,000 teams, they'd first need to find a World Championship venue the size of Rhode Island..