About FIRST

What is FIRST?

FIRST is an acronym meaning for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. FIRST is the largest high school robotics organization in the world, supporting over 1500 teams in 7 countries. FIRST organizes an annual global competition with 42 regional events and a championship at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia. RAWC has been participating in FIRST Robotics since 2002.

FIRST Robotics Competition

The FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), was designed to inspire high school students to become engineers by giving them real world experience working with professional engineers to develop a robot. The inaugural FIRST Robotics Competition was held in 1992 in the Manchester Memorial High School gymnasium. As of 2008, over 1500 high school teams totaling over 32,306 students from Brazil, Canada, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, and the United States compete in the annual competition. The competition challenge is different each year, and the teams cannot reuse components created for previous robots. The robots weigh 120 pounds and stand up to 5 feet tall. The kit of parts issued to each team contains a base set of motors and electronics. Details of the game are released at the beginning of January, and the teams are given six weeks to design, construct, and program a competitive robot that can accomplish the game’s tasks. In 2009, teams will compete in 42 regional competitions from February through April in an effort to qualify for the FIRST Robotics World Championship in Atlanta, Georgia in April.