FIRST's vision of keeping it real world

FIRST has probably made a statement about this, but I've recently thought about how they are trying to guide the experience in the competition to the way things work in the real world. Specifically this can be applied to the control system.

The 2008 season was the last season FIRST used the old IFI control system. It was custom designed for FIRST and they used it for multiple years. For the 2009 season, however, they switched to a system based off National Instrument's CompactRIO industry controller. NI is one of the leaders in hardware control systems and provides products for the whole process, including their graphical programming language, LabVIEW. Some people complained about the switch, but many saw it as an opportunity to advance and learn more applicable things.

Then, in the 2010 season they switched a major part of the control system again: the driver station. In the 2009 season we got a new operator console, but this was a custom made blue box with inputs and outputs. For 2010, FIRST switched us to use a netbook computer, the ClassmatePC, to run a virtual software that would control operator control. The driver station input/output system was also changed, as this year if you wanted to include a custom switch or light, you would wire it up to a microcontroller that was programmed to convert the signal to USB for the netbook to understand. These driver station changes reflect that often programs are run on computers in the real world and that companies, hobbyists, and engineers don't always make a custom product for everything.

I appreciate this initiative of FIRST and I can definitely see how it enables teams to develop and advance more and see much more clearly how things work outside of the competition. Which is ultimately a major goal of FIRST.

FIRST Robotics

FIRST is not really a resource, but it's very important to me and I'd like to include it in these first resource posts. FIRST is a non-profit organization that runs multiple youth robotics competitions with the vision of inspiring kids about the benefits of science, technology, engineering, and their careers. The name is an acronym that means For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. It was founded in 1992 by Dean Kamen, an entrepreneur and the inventor of the Segway, and has competitions for elementary, middle, and high school age students.

FIRST is amazing because it promotes the values of science, technology and engineering. They recognize that you can do great things, help the world, and learn valuable life lessons in these fields. They give a competitive, enjoyable, and insightful medium for exploring what these and related careers are all about. The competitions put a focus on learning from adult mentors that can guide and further enrich this experience better than the students could on their own.

I participate in a FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) high school team, where teams build robots out of real-world parts in six weeks that plays in a competitive game which changes each year. I have learned a whole lot from the experience and have further strengthened my passion for engineering.