About FRC
The FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) provides an opportunity for high-school-aged students to work with professional engineers and business mentors; learn teamwork through a demanding, fast-paced project; and experience STEM through vigorous competition. FRC is an international competition where high school students must build a robot to compete in a new game each year. Through their time in FRC, students learn important engineering principles related to physics, mechanical design, manufacturing, electrical systems, programming, statistical analysis, presentation skills, and much more. For many students, FRC is a life changing, career-molding experience. There is nothing else like it to challenge and motivate high school students interested in STEM careers to set and achieve lofty goals.
Each year in early January, FIRST, an organization based in Manchester, New Hampshire, livestreams a kick-off event to reveal the new FRC game to teams around the world. Teams then have 6 weeks to fully design, build, wire, and program their robots before competitions start. At competitions, matches are 3 vs 3, so each team must work with two other teams to get points and win against the other “alliance” of three robots. Robots get points by performing various tasks within the game, including both autonomous and student-controlled actions. For each district or region in the world, teams participate in competitions against other teams in their area, and if they rise to the top, they advance to the FRC World Championship, which hosts 600 of the best teams in the world, out of over 3000 existing teams. At the Championship, teams are sorted into 8 Divisions of 75 teams each. Each of these Divisions acts like a separate competition, and the winners of each Division face off in one final playoff bracket on the Einstein Field. The winners of the Einstein playoffs are declared the World Champions!
To learn more about FRC, visit FIRST's website and view FIRST's video below.