FIRST Competition
Envision the typical professional basketball game. Spectators cheer while bright lights beam down onto sweating players who race about the floor. The sounds are deafening and the electric buzz of the competition is unmistakable. Now, replace the fans with screaming hordes of high school geeks, and the athletes with robots. This is a FIRST competition.
At a FIRST FRC competition, teams take part in whatever competition the FIRST committee developed and announced in early January of each season. These games involve robots racing in circles, throwing balls, grabbing goals, and other tasks set forth by FIRST. Drivers control the robots from the sidelines while human players take some part in the game, adding a slight athletic touch.
The pits are opposite to the field of play, divided by a curtain. Here, teams maintain their robots, duct-taping cracked welds and mourning snapped shafts. Judges walk about the pits, speaking to teams about their designs. Occasionally, VIPs, including politicians and high-ranking corporate representatives will browse the pits, fawning over robots.
The competition concludes with an elaborate award ceremony. Awards are given to the winning robot alliance, as well as several other teams for various awards, such as Design Excellence and Gracious Professionalism. The ceremony concludes with the Engineering Inspiration and Chairman's awards, the highest awards attainable in FRC Competition.
2010 Competition
In this year's competition, titled “Breakaway,” robots compete to shoot soccer balls into goals. The field is divided into three zones by bumps, which robots must cross to traverse the field. Each team may shoot into one of two goals next to their own player station. Once a ball is scored, a human player from each alliance must use a PVC trident to place the ball back into play. In the last 20 seconds of play, each team may score bonus points by hanging robots from a rack, or hanging from an allied robot.
