Wassup guys. I wanted to create this topic because I joined this organization at the beginning of the school year and I thought some of you guys may be interested.
This year I joined FIRST, which is a organization for Robotics. I joined the highschool branch FRC and I really love it.
Basically how it works is in January, you go to where the game for that year is going to be revealed, after that, you get 6 weeks to build an 150lb robot. The robot has electrical equipment on it, we code in java, and C++. After the 6 week period, the Robot has to be put away until the first competition. There are 5 qualifiers in Georgia where I live. One in Dalton, Athens, Forsyth, and Columbus.
How the competition works is simple. The colors of FIRST are red and blue. So the two alliances are the red and the blue alliances. Each alliance has three teams. During the qualification matches, you are assigned partners. After the qualification matches are over, alliance selection begins.
Alliance selection is when the top 8 ranked teams choose their alliances for the playoffs. If you are picked, you are in the playoffs. However if you decline an invitation from a team to join their alliance, you cannot be picked. This may seem unfair but it is not. If a team got an invitation from a not so good alliance captain and declined and then a really good alliance picked them later, it wouldn’t be fair for everyone else. It limits teams being able to hold out until a good team picks them.
After the qualifiers are over, the top 43 teams from each district in that state move on to compete at the state championship. In my case in Georgia, we made the state championship which was held at the LakePoint Champion Center in Emerson Georgia. The same rules for alliance selections are applied in the state championship.
After the matches are over, the top 18 teams move on to the World Championship. Depending in what area of the U.S. your team is in, you will either compete in the world championship in Houston of Detroit.
In Houston there are different buildings you compete in. Those include the George R. Brown Convetion center, Minute Maid park home of the Houston Astros, and Reliant Statium home of the houston texans.
My team 5332 Toaster Tech is going to Worlds which is next week. Now there are two ways to get into Worlds. You can earn your way in and there is a WildCard Waitlist. What happens is a team can sign up for a wildcard spot into worlds. FIRST will reply back to the team who got the wildcard.
Competitions do involve traveling. Depending on where your team operates out of. The only time traveling out of state happens is for worlds. Depending on what is cheaper, teams will get an airbnb or hotel. Qualifiers are 3 days from thursday to saturday. State competition is 4 days while worlds is five depending on when your team gets to worlds
If you guys are interested in joining FIRST, I will post some links further explaining FIRST and what happens.
If any of you live in Georgia close to Decatur, please visit this website for my team. Currently we have 11 people but 6 of our members are seniors and will be leaving after this season. We would be more than willing to welcome new members get them accustomed to everything FIRST involves. Thanks for reading guys! I hope to see you at a competition.
Here is the link for our team as well as the reveal video for our robot this year:
If you guys are interested in joining please click the Join Toaster Tech Button and we will get back to you as soon as we can.
Here is the game reveal video for the 2019 FIRST Robotics season:
Here is what a match would look like
The robot with the blue LED strip is ours.
Here is more information about first:
Here is information about worlds and the amazing experience it is:
Now for the parents out there or even kids who are not at a highschool age yet, FIRST is not just for highschool. First is for elementary kids as well as middle school.
Here is info about fll and ftc:
http://www.firstlegoleague.org/
https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/ftc
Feel free to ask questions about it on this topic and if you are apart of FIRST, chime in about the great experiences of this organizatoin
I hope this isn’t too long of a post but I really hope you guys will join or look at this. I hope you guys will begin to love it as much as I do.
Thanks guys!
