The FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is an international high school robotics competition operated by FIRST. Each year, the organization designs a game around various tasks, and teams of high school students, coaches, and mentors build robots to play it. Tasks have included shooting balls into goals, hanging on bars, placing objects in predetermined locations, and balancing robots on field elements. Teams are given a set of parts during the annual Kickoff; they are encouraged to purchase or fabricate specialized components. FIRST Robotics Competition is one of five robotics competition programs organized by FIRST, along with FIRST LEGO League Discover, FIRST LEGO League Explore, FIRST LEGO League Challenge, and FIRST Tech Challenge. The program aims to inspire students to be science and technology leaders. It urges participants to demonstrate two values: "Gracious Professionalism", or help, empathy, and respect for other teams; and "Coopertition", the idea that teams can cooperate and compete at the same time. In 2024, the 33rd year of the competition, robots were built by 3,468 teams in 28 countries, comprising more than 86,700 students and 27,700 mentors. Events included 62 Regional Competitions, 98 District Qualifying Competitions, and 11 District Championships. More than 600 teams received invitations to attend the FIRST Championship tournament. In addition to on-field competition, teams and team members competed for awards recognizing entrepreneurship, creativity, engineering, industrial design, safety, controls, media, quality, and exemplifying the core values of the program. The COVID-19 pandemic dampened participation during the 2021 season.
History
FIRST was founded in 1989 by American inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen, who has since voluntarily resigned from his position. With inspiration and assistance from physicist and MIT professor emeritus Woodie Flowers, Kamen sought to increase the number of kids—particularly women and minorities—who consider science and technology careers. He looked for activities that captured the enthusiasm of students and decided that combining the excitement of sports competition with science and technology could inspire students.
Distilling what sports had done right into a recipe for engaging young people, Kamen says, turned out to be relatively straightforward. "It's after school, not in school. It's aspirational, not required," he explained to me. "You don't get quizzes and tests, you go into competitions and get trophies and letters. You don't have teachers, you have coaches. You nurture, you don't judge. You create teamwork between all the participants. We justify sports for teamwork but why, when we do it in the classroom, do we call it cheating?"
Most of all, it was a nonjudgmental space, where in contrast science and math in traditional educational settings had been soured with embarrassment and uncertainty. Kamen has stated that FIRST is the invention he feels most proud of and predicts that participants will lead technological advances in years to come. The first FRC season was in 1992 and had one event at a high school gymnasium in New Hampshire. That first competition was relatively small, similar in size to today's FIRST Tech Challenge and Vex Robotics Competition games. Robots used a wire to receive data from drivers; in the following year, it switched to a wireless system.
Teams
In the 2024 Crescendo season, 3,468 teams from 28 countries competed, including 327 "rookie teams" in their first season of competition.
Competition FIRST Robotics competition operates in two competition models determined by geographic location, District and Regional.
Districts Teams competing in districts may attend two smaller events as part of their registration. Advancement from the district to FIRST Championship is dependent on participation in a District Championship event and the Championship slots allocated to each district. While regional teams may never compete in district events, district teams are permitted to compete in regional events but cannot qualify for the FIRST Championship from regional participation. Districts are geographically defined areas and all teams within the area are part of the district.
Regionals All teams not located inside a district are considered Regional Model Teams. Regional Model Teams are allocated one, generally large, regional event from registration. Advancement from regional events is direct to FIRST Championship on basis of achieving specific merit requirements.
FIRST Championship
The FIRST Championship is the culmination of the FRC season, and occurs in late April each year. As of 2025, about 600 teams compete in the FIRST Championship in Houston, Texas. In the past, as many as 800 teams participated in two separate Championships, such as in 2018 where it was held in Houston, Texas and Detroit, Michigan. After the 2022 championships concluded FIRST announced that the world championship would take place at a single location, Houston, Texas, for the 2023 and 2024 seasons. This was later updated through 2027, and then 2034. In past years, there have been as many as 12 concurrent divisions at the FIRST Championship. As of 2025, FRC teams are divided into 8 divisions at the FIRST Championship:
Archimedes Curie Daly Galileo Hopper Johnson Milstein Newton The divisions operate in the model of independent events. The winning alliance from each division advances to Einstein Field for a final tournament. Despite being referenced as a single field, Einstein matches take place on two fields known as Mass and Energy which are re-used from the division fields. The teams of the winning alliance are given automatic advancement to FIRST Championship for the next season and the Impact award-winning team is given automatic advancement for the next 8 seasons.
Awards At every competition, judges interview teams and give awards based on exemplary qualities. Some awards are based on the attributes of a robot, while some are based on the attributes of a team. Other awards require teams to submit additional content before they can be judged. Awards given based on robot attributes:
Autonomous Award Creativity Award Excellence in Engineering Award Industrial Design Award Innovation in Control Quality Award Awards given based on team attributes:
Engineering Inspiration Award Gracious Professionalism Award Imagery Award Judges Award Rising All-Star Award Rookie All-Star Award Team Spirit Award Team Sustainability Award Submitted awards:
FIRST Impact Award (formerly the Chairman's Award) FIRST Leadership Award (formerly the FIRST Dean's List Award) Woodie Flowers Award Digital Animation Award Safety Animation Award Other awards:
Winner, given to all the teams on the winning alliance Finalist, given to all the teams on the alliance that was eliminated in the finals Volunteer of the Year, given to a volunteer in the FIRST community The Digital Animation Award and the Safety Animation Award are different in that they are not given at the competition. Instead, FIRST chooses the winner globally from every team that submitted an animation.
Media exposure The PBS documentary "Gearing Up" followed four teams through the 2008 season. In the television series Dean of Invention, Dean Kamen made appeals promoting FIRST prior to commercial breaks. In 2008, FRC Team 1114, Simbotics, was featured in an ongoing storyline on the hit Canadian TV drama "Degrassi: Next Generation". Team 1114's 2006-2007 world champion VEX robot made an appearance, as well as their 2008 world champion FRC robot. During the 2010 FIRST Robotics Competition season, FIRST team 3132, Thunder Down Under, was followed by a Macquarie University student film crew to document the first year of FIRST Robotics Competition in Australia. The crew produced a documentary film called I, Wombot. The film premiered during the 2011 Dungog Film Festival. A book called The New Cool was written by Neal Bascomb about the story of Team 1717 from Goleta, California as they competed in the 2009 game season. The CNN documentary "Don't Fail Me: Education in America", which aired on May 15, 2011, followed three FRC teams during the 2011 season. The documentary profiled one student from each team, covering different geographic and socioeconomic levels: Shaan Patel from Team 1403 Cougar Robotics, Maria Castro from Team 842 Falcon Robotics, and Brian Whited from Team 3675 Eagletrons. On August 14, 2011, ABC aired a special on FIRST called "i.am FIRST: Science is Rock and Roll" that featured many famous musical artists such as The Black Eyed Peas and Willow Smith. will.i.am himself was the executive producer of the special. The program placed a special focus on the FIRST Robotics competition, even though it included segments on the FIRST Tech Challenge, FIRST LEGO League, and FIRST LEGO League Jr. From 1996 to 1998, the FIRST Championship was covered by ESPN. For the 2013 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, five FIRST Robotics Competition teams and their robots led the parade, with one robot cutting the ribbon and the others shooting confetti. In the 2014 movie Transformers: Age of Extinction, a FIRST Robotics Competition Robot built by Team 2468, Team Appreciate, for the 2012 Season was featured in Cade Yeager's garage shooting the foam basketball game pieces from Rebound Rumble. The 2015 Kickoff was, for the first time, broadcast by NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast, and was available via OnDemand for the month of January 2015. In 2016, Christina Li, a member of Team 217, the ThunderChickens, was spotlighted on an episode of Nickelodeon's The Halo Effect entitled "Hello World". A coding camp that Li organized for young girls was featured on the episode, and 217's robot from the 2015 season made an appearance. The fourth season of The Fosters (2013 TV series) had several episodes featuring characters competing in a regional FIRST Robotics Competition competition, most notably episode 8 "Girl Code". In June 2018, HBO aired a Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel episode, which in a segment, the correspondent Soledad O'Brien interviewed Dean Kamen about FIRST and FIRST Robotics Competition and then later interviewed students from various FRC teams. The February 25, 2020 episode of the ABC sitcom Black-ish features recurring character, Jack Johnson, joining a FIRST team—and a cameo by Dean Kamen. Episode 6 in the second season of the Netflix original series Trinkets featured a FIRST Robotics Competition competition. On March 18, 2022, Disney+ released a documentary directed by Gillian Jacobs titled "More than Robots", which follows four teams in the 2020 season, leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Notable people
Alumni Priscilla Chan (Team 69) Leanne Cushing Emma Dumont (Team 980) Imraan Faruque Dylan Field (Team 675) Amanda Randles
Employees and volunteers Joseph Bouchard Imogen Coe Michael Dubno Amber Gell Marc Hodosh, entrepreneur, chairman of the Boston FIRST Robotics Competition competition Mark Leon, NASA researcher and Master of Ceremonies for several FIRST Robotics Competition events David Siegel
Mentors Amir Abo-Shaeer (Team 1717), teacher and engineer, subject of The New Cool Emma Dumont (Team 680) Maor Farid Patrick Freivald (Team 1551) Grant Imahara (Team 841), engineer and roboticist, former cast member of MythBusters Dave Lavery (Team 116), NASA scientist and former member of the FIRST Robotics Competition Game Design Committee Nic Radford (Team 118) Nancy Yasecko (Team 233)
Games
Gallery
Notes
References
Sources Michigan robotics champs off to world finals in St. Louis- Detroit Free Press FIRST Robotics Competition's 2011 Regional Season Is Worth a Look - PCWorld
External links
Official website NASA FIRST Robotics Competition site