Build Your Own Combat Robot

FIGURE 1-6
Team Titan
Robotics from the
International School
in Bellevue,
Washington, built
Prometheus for a
FIRST competition.
(courtesy of
Larry Barello)
Chapter 1: Welcome to Competition Robots 15
only six weeks to design and build their bot. After that time, they compete in regional
contests and later move on to the final championship.
In 1992, the inaugural year of the FIRST competition, there was only one contest
with 23 teams entered. Since then, the contest has grown significantly. In
2001, there were 14 competitions with a total of 535 teams entered. FIRST has
grown to include Canadian and Brazilian teams, as well.
Each year the goal of the contest changes, and nobody knows this goal until the
first day of the six-week countdown. During this six-week time period, teams must
figure out the rules and goals of the contest and design and build their bot. During
the actual contest, a team is paired up with another team, and those two groups of
people must work together to solve the prescribed challenge against two other
teams. The particular contests are designed so that teamwork is required in order to
score enough points. During most of the preliminary rounds, the contest officials
decide team pairings. In the finals, a team is allowed to choose its partners. The
FIRST organizers believe this helps promote teamwork and cooperation.
FIRST robotics is an extremely challenging and exciting contest. Many of today’s
famous combat robot warriors cut their teeth in competition robotics by
competing in FIRST, either by participating as a member of a high-school team or
serving as a mentor to a FIRST team. A lot of the technologies and skills needed for
building combat robots are used in designing FIRST robots.
The official FIRST Web site is www.usfirst.org.