FRC in Europe, Part 2

FIRST General Forum
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For sentimental reasons I kinda want to revive the FRC in Europe Thread or at least get a bit of a status update on it from our EU teams. Quite a bit of time has passed since that thread, with a little pandemic in between, throwing wrenches in our swerve drives.

Currently on the tail end of a month-long trip back home to Germany (near Cologne, so close enough to NL) and seeing there not being any larger, organized form of FRC in Germany or Europe makes me sad.
I’m always joking with my wife that we could only ever return from Canada when there would be an FRC team for me to mentor :wink:
I’m getting the sense it ain’t gonna happen if I don’t throw myself at making it happen.

So, what gives?

Anything I can support with from Canada?
Is there any value in maybe creating targeted student exchange programs with EU schools to get students hooked on FRC and have them promote it in their locales? I was thinking something like: Schedule an exchange such that they can tag along during build season and take part in the competitions to get a feel for it. As someone who grew up and went to school in Germany I can attest to the fact that I had no idea what an experience an FRC event is. Simply unfathomable for European students.

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Many Many Turkish students have graduated and gone to university in Europe, I am trying to help them at least be aware when multiple turkish alumni end up in the same city so they can work together on starting teams, but that may take a few years to get going.

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That’s amazing!

That’s what I recognize and expect. It is, and has already been, as you’ve demonstrated in Türkiye, a process that starts slow and steady and hopefully some day takes off like it did for you. But it’s a long path to sustainability.
Given that Germany has a large Turkish population and thus connection with Türkiye, maybe there are opportunities for exchanges as well.

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Someone has to be willing to be there and manage it. It needs a ridiculously dedicated person, or team of people. It happened here because we worked hard :slight_smile:

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I don’t know how this works in the rest of Europe, but in the Netherlands, the problem is not really the students. I think it is mostly cost related.

Having an FRC team as a high school here is simply not possible for financial reasons. Therefore you need some form of partnership between higher education, high schools and companies. These partnerships can be difficult to create if the program is not really well known and you have no tangible way of showing it off as our closest competitions are either in Türkiye or the US.

This is unfortunate, as we need these new teams to ever have a chance of having a local competition. So we are kind of stuck in a vicious circle.

We do have two new future FRC teams in the Netherlands (hopefully competing in 2025). So there is some growth, just not much. Most schools in the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) choose to do FTC instead, as competitions are way more local and significantly more affordable.

We hope to eventually reach a threshold for FIRST to consider Europe eligible for their own regional but I’m afraid that will take some time.

Regarding the situation in other countries, maybe @Andy5553 has some more in-depth information about France.

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This ıs important. We had the same problem in Türkiye, after like 8 years there were only 8 teams in the country, so we decided to run an off-season, and give teams kits for 10% of their actual cost, figuring well, they’ll try it, love it, and stick around. That worked, but it is very very expensive. We went from 8 teams to 21 in a year, and 34 the following year, and 55 when we had our first regional in 2018. 32 of those teams from that period are still competing.

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Hello, I am a mentor for a French team called “Cyborgbulls” (Team 9102) and currently studying engineering. Our team was founded by Robo’Lyon alumni Alexi when he joined the engineering school IMT Mines Alès. Although officially established last year, our journey began two years ago with five high school students, one professor, and two mentors from IMT Mines Alès, including Alexi. In the first year, they didn’t participate in the competition but focused on developing a drivetrain, CAD, and programming.

I, along with two other mentors, joined the team in September 2023 before recruiting 13 high school students. We had never heard of FIRST before, which may explain why there are relatively few teams in Europe. Our initial challenge was securing funding, which we achieved by applying for grants (FIRST rookie grant), securing our first sponsor (Schneider Electric), organizing food sales in high school, and receiving support from Robotique FIRST France.

In my opinion, having FIRST alumni is crucial for starting a team. Alexi and Andy, both Robo’Lyon alumni (with Andy now working for Robotique FIRST France), played a significant role in initiating the team by providing CAD classes to students and organizing the project. Therefore, alumni are essential in either helping or directly establishing new teams in Europe.

Contrary to the 2019 thread, I don’t think that the culture of sponsorship is absent in France. In just one year, we have found 7 sponsors (French companies) and received grants from public institutions. While finding sponsors is challenging, it is certainly achievable. One of the difficulties is the budget required for extensive travel with a group of 20 people, as we did last year to Trois-Rivières, Canada, and this year to Montréal, Canada.

Moreover, starting a team in France poses challenges due to the lack of technical classes, such as computing or CAD, in high schools. Additionally, there are no workplaces with machinery for building a robot. The busy timetables further complicate matters. For instance, in our team, we can only work on weekends in a room without a dedicated workshop.

Last year, we did the first 100% French alliance in the history of FRC playoffs in the regional event in Trois-Rivières, Canada. This accomplishment may inspire other French high schools to participate in FRC. Interestingly, FTC is gaining popularity faster than FRC, possibly due to its accessibility in terms of budget, skills, and time. There are now numerous FTC teams in France, and a competition in Lyon is organized by Robotique FIRST France.

I will share this thread with Andy, who works at Robotique FIRST France (which promotes FTC and FRC teams in France), as he may have a more precise point of view on this subject. Thank you for reading !

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I recently visited the Deutsches Museum in Munich, and was surprised to see their robotics exhibit had no mention of pre-college academic robotics. There were lots of toys / roombas, the dog-like robots, and a brief mention of battle bots. I think a FRC robot and/or FTC robots would fit nicely into the exhibit, particularly if it looked as polished as 4481’s usual bots.

They have a pair of analog light following robots from the 40’s, which was the highlight for me.

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Contrary to the Netherlands, Germany doesn’t really have a big FTC scene either. I believe there are only 3 organisations with participating teams: A community team from Berlin, a school in Stuttgart and a school in a more remote area of Baden-Württemberg.

They don’t have a local competition either and have to travel to the Benelux region to compete. I would assume they face the same growth issues we have with FRC.

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Hi,

I don’t want to repeat what has already been said since everything is on point. Our point of view from Robotique FIRST France is that FRC in Europe doesn’t have the same cost/impact ratio as FTC. For example: to start an FRC team in France there is a minimum entry fee of $6000. However, FTC is significantly less meaning that with the same $6000 we can help about 6 teams thus reaching more students (6 times more), more communities, etc with a similar program. As of now, there are more than 50 FTC in all over France and the community is growing steadily.

My personal wish would be to have a strong enough FTC community to be able to switch about 20 FTC teams to FRC all at once and launch a European FRC Regional with the other European FRC teams. However, this costs a very large amount of money and a lot of energy for the Robotique FIRST France team and especially the FTC teams. Starting an FRC regional also demands a lot of authorizations and prerequisites from FIRST HQ.

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Are FTC and/or FRC championships being held in France this year?

Where can we get more info? Thanks.

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Robotique FIRST France - Le Défi Robotique 2024

But I’m sure @Andy5553 can give more/better info on this

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Thanks. “Défi Robotique” appears to be an off-season competition. I somehow had understood in the past that official competitions might come to France soon and was hoping for good news.

For background, I moved from France to the US twenty-five years ago, but I still have a lot of friends with engineering background that could eventually get involved… but who at this time know nothing about the FIRST situation in France.

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Hi @gartaud ,

I work for Robotique FIRST France, the official branch of FIRST in France. We are looking for people who would like to get involved as mentors, volunteers, or anything else. My email is [email protected]. Feel free to email me and I would be happy to schedule a zoom to see how we can work together. We have over 50 teams (and growing) in all over France so I’m sure we can figure something out.

As for official competitions: this year’s competition was supposed to be official with a ticket for Houston. However, our venue was booked and we had no choice but to choose a date that was too late to get a ticket. We definitely plan on sending teams to Houston next year though!

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It was great seeing a French alliance at Trois-Rivière last season. We definitely felt something special in the playoffs.

Even though I only follow Robotique FIRST France through social media, I see a lot of great things with Le Défi Robotique and the growth of FTC. The strategy to try and convert a number of FTC teams to FRC is great because you make sure you have settled teams with a reasonable amount of experience and resources.

With enough time to prepare, I’m sure some Québec teams might be interested in participating in a French Regional. My team would be at least. (2026 maybe?)

I would go even further and assume a number of Québec teams might be willing to mentor a future French team. Francophone teams are still only a fraction of the FIRST community, but that doesn’t mean they have to feel appart.

In any case, I think France is a great start for an FRC event in Europe, and I think it can only grow from there!

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