Robots are clearly having a big impact on our world:
* Honda's two-legged humanoid robot named ASIMO is touring around the country.
* NASA's six-wheeled rovers are exploring Mars.
* iRobot's plate-shaped robot is sweeping floors across America.
Every time you turn on the TV or read the news, it seems like you are hearing about robots. There are thousands of different problems for robots to solve, and thousands of ways for them to be built.
What if you want to build your own robot? Where would you learn how to do it? How would you assemble all the parts and program it? Now, whether you are a middle school student, a high school student, or you are an adult who would like to help out, there's an answer to these questions. FIRST runs a series of regional and national robot competitions where students work in teams to design and build a robot of their own.
The Basics
FIRST is an organization that has been around since 1992, and its initial competition involved just 28 teams in a high school gym. A lot has happened over the last decade; in 2004, nearly 1,000 teams and more than 20,000 students will be competing.
FIRST's founder, Dean Kamen, is best known for inventing the Segway scooter, but is also the inventor of a number of important medical devices.
An enormous robot competition is FIRST's truly big event each year. It is preceded by a series of 26 regional competitions, and it all starts every year with a kick-off meeting in early January. In 2004, the national competition was held in April in Atlanta, Georgia.
Although the focus of attention is around the competitions, the actual goal of FIRST is very different. FIRST helps the students who participate learn about robots, and it also helps them learn about an ethos called "gracious professionalism". In a nutshell, the idea behind gracious professionalism is that teams cooperate with each other rather than trash-talking and bludgeoning each other with a "winner takes all" mentality. The FIRST web site puts it this way:
Gracious folks respect others and let that respect show in their actions. Professionals possess special knowledge and are trusted by society to use that knowledge responsibly. Thus, gracious professionals make a valued contribution in a manner pleasing to others and to themselves. In FIRST, one of the most straightforward interpretations of gracious professionalism is that we learn and compete like crazy, but treat one another with respect and kindness in the process. We try to avoid leaving anyone feeling like they are losers. No chest thumping barbarian tough talk, but no sticky sweet platitudes either. Knowledge, pride and empathy comfortably blended.... In the long run, gracious professionalism is part of pursuing a meaningful life. If one becomes a professional, and uses knowledge in a gracious manner, everyone wins. One can add to society and enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that you have acted with integrity and sensitivity.
Competition 2004
Each year, FIRST announces a new competition in early January. All participating teams get a kit of parts in February, and then have approximately six weeks to design and build their robot to meet the year's challenge. Teams compete in 26 regional contests, and the winners go on to the national competition. The national competition for 2004 was held in Atlanta, Georgia.
he annual FIRST challenge is always demanding. Here are the challenges for the past two years to give you an idea of the skill level at which these robots must work:
* Stack Attack (2003) - The playing area measured 54 feet x 24 feet (16.5 meters x 7.3 meters). There was a platform with ramps at the center of the field, with scoring zones at either end of the field. The platform was initially stacked with 29 large plastic storage bins. The robots moved the bins into the designated scoring area, with extra points awarded for bins that were stacked on top of each other.
* Zone Zeal (2002) - The playing area measured 48 feet x 24 feet (14.6 meters x 7.3 meters), with five marked zones approximately 10 feet (3 meters) wide down the length of the field. On the field were three large, moveable goals and 40 soccer balls. Each team tried to place as many soccer balls as possible into one of the goals and move the goal to the proper point on the field.
For 2004, the challenge was called FIRST Frenzy. On each end of the field there were bins containing 18 playground balls. When activated, these bins spilled their balls onto the field. Robots picked up these balls and passed them to human players standing at the outside ends of the field. The human players shot the balls into goals on the field. Robots then needed to cap these goals with large balls, and then move to the center of the field and try to grasp hold of and hang from a 10-foot-high chin-up bar. The entire game lasted only two minutes, so everything happens very quickly. See this video from the NASA archive for a demonstration of a typical game.
The Kit of Parts
Once a team forms, joins FIRST and pays the year's sign-up fee, the team waits for the kick-off meeting. At the kick-off meeting, FIRST announces the challenge for the year. At this time, FIRST also releases the manuals for the year and starts shipping the infamous kit of parts.
Each team gets the same kit. Inside each kit are all of the important parts that the team will need to build a robot. Each kit includes:
* Motors
* Sensors
* Shafts
* Bearings
* The robot's radio receiver
* The robot's computer brain
* The robot's battery power pack
* The team's multi-channel radio control system for the robot
Teams are also allowed to purchase certain approved extra items. With these parts, the team can begin the design process and construction.
Each team's design is completely original, but they all contain three basic elements:
* The robot needs a frame to hold all the motors, wheels, batteries and so on together. The frame and all the parts (including the battery, bumpers and decorations) are allowed a maximum weight of 130 pounds per robot.
* The robot needs one or more "arms" or "ball movers" of some sort. For example, one goal of the 2004 challenge required that the robot gather balls and move them toward the human players at the end of the field. A task like this could be accomplished in many ways; with arms that throw the balls, conveyor belts that shoot the balls, bats that hit the balls, and more. Another goal is to grasp a 10-foot-high (3-meter-high) chin-up bar and lift the robot off the ground. This feat might require a completely different "arm" mechanism, or utilize the same "arms" used to move the balls.
* The robot needs a set of wheels that are able to move the robot around the field.
Watching a Real Team
You can learn a great deal about FIRST and its competitions by talking to a real team. For example, Dr. Carson Roberts of Frederick Douglas High School is the faculty advisor for that school's team, and talked with me about his experiences with FIRST.
This was Douglas High's first year competing. The school had never built a robot before, so there was a lot to learn in a short period of time. According to Roberts, the teams really only have six weeks to design, build and test the robot. The entire cycle is extremely compressed, and for the Pink Panther team there were many long days (and even some all-nighters) during the six weeks.
The first order of business was raising money. There's the $5,000 entry fee, which gets you the kit of parts. But then you have to raise all of the remaining money to buy everything else you need. This includes materials for the frame, other motors and actuators, extra electronics and so on. And, don't forget the cost of travel expenses if a team makes it to the final competition. There is a limit set at $20,000 for the total cost of the robot. A typical team, therefore, needs to raise between $10,000 and $30,000 dollars in order to compete.
Douglas High School was able to sign on the Coca-Cola® Company as a primary sponsor, as well as other companies and people from the community. Several companies had engineers who agreed to help the team, and another FIRST team also offered advice and support. One volunteer joined the team through pure serendipity. One of the team's adult volunteers met Bob Bateman, a mechanic at Atlanta Triumph Ducati, while standing in line at Home Depot. Bateman did most of the welding for the team's robot. According to Roberts, "One of the wonderful things about FIRST is the community involvement."
Because this was the team's first time, Roberts decided to focus the team's efforts on just one part of the competition. There really are four skills that a complete robot would have needed to master in order to win the 2004 event:
* The ability to follow a line
* The ability to scoop up balls and pass them to the players
* The ability to cap a goal with a large ball
* The ability to pull up on the pull-up bar
The team decided to build the goal-capping feature first, since that represented the most points.
The starting point for every team is the kit of parts. According to Roberts, it supplies the radio control transmitter and receiver, the on-board robot computer and starting software for it, the main drive wheels, two motors to drive them (the motors come from common electric drills), and assorted other parts. So, on day-one of the project, they started with those parts and a blank sheet of paper...
Building the Pink Panther
The Douglas High team wanted to build a mechanism that could pick up a large rubber ball and lift it on top of a goal, like in the image pictured on the right.
To do that, they drew out a design on paper that looked like it would work. Then an engineer helping the team did a complete 3-D computer aided design (CAD) using a software package called Pro-E. This package made it possible to move the model on-screen and make sure everything would move correctly in the finished robot.
The team had perhaps 15 core students who put in a lot of hours, and a total of 34 members. The team members took the design from the CAD package and cut/bent the aluminum tubes that would form the structure of the robot. The tubes then went to Bob Bateman for welding. As they came back from the bike garage, assembly began.
The ball-scooping claw is a fairly complex mechanism. The arm for the claw extends and retracts using a van-door motor. The tower tilts forward and back, and this tilt is provided by a lead screw and CIM motor. The claw opens and closes with a double-acting pneumatic (meaning it runs on compressed air) cylinder running at 20 PSI. The pressurized air comes from two small canisters that are pumped up before the competition. The driver has only six cycles of opening and closing the claw before the Pink Panther runs out of compressed air.
With the claw complete ahead of schedule, the team decided to design and build a ball-scooping mechanism in the last 48 hours. It used one more CIM motor to power the ball-gathering roller. A Victor motor controller controls all of these motors under the direction of the radio control receiver.
The team also added five light sensors on the front of the robot. The sensors let the Pink Panther follow a white line on the grey carpet. For the first 15 seconds of the match, the robot follows the line to knock a ball off a post, thereby beginning a game.
In the photo below, you can see the aluminum frame (with numerous holes to lighten the robot and keep it within the 130 pound weight limit), the two main drive motors (from portable electric drills), the five yellow light sensors that let the robot track a line on the floor, and the motor controller.
With the robot complete, the team crated it up (before the end of the six-week deadline) and sent it to Atlanta for the regional competition in March.
If they had won, the Pink Panther team would have made another trip to Atlanta, where the national competition was held in April. The completed robot weighed in at just under the 130 pound maximum weight (they drilled holes in parts of the frame to lighten it). It stands five feet tall, and then extends to nine feet tall to reach over the top of the goal.
At the end of week six, all of the robots are sealed in crates and sent to the competition site. Teams do not see their robots again until they arrive at the competition site and get ready to compete. Hopefully the robot ships without damage and works when uncrated.
Forming a Team
FIRST is fun, challenging and educational. It is also a great exercise in teamwork. Therefore, you would think that every school would have at least one team entered in the competition. However, it's not quite as easy as it sounds to form a team. One of the first challenges of FIRST is getting your act together enough to create a new team.
To start a team, you need a group of interested students in your high school. There's no limit on team size and no "recommended" team size, but a team needs a good mix of skills. With a robot there are mechanical aspects, electrical aspects, computer aspects, creativity aspects and more. A good team needs to cover all of these areas.
The next step is to find adults who are willing to help. There needs to be one or more faculty advisers, as well as mentors and volunteers from the community. It is highly unlikely that a group of students could assemble a complete working robot from scratch in six weeks without the help of engineers from several disciplines.
FIRST Pointer
FIRST recommends that a new team contact an existing local team to make the start-up process easier. There's a lot you can learn from the experience of an existing team.
Then there is the cash problem; FIRST is expensive. To enter and compete in the regional event, there is a $5,000 entry fee. A typical team has an annual budget of between $15,000 and $30,000 [ref], depending on whether the team goes to the national competition or not. The team has to raise all of that money from local sponsors or through grants, and it's not easy -- but it can certainly be done.
Despite these hurdles, nearly 1,000 teams competed in the 2004 FIRST competition.
FIRST Lego League
FIRST now runs a separate competition for middle school students called the FIRST Lego League (FLL). The structure is similar to that of the high school FIRST competitions, but there are many differences that simplify things for younger students:
* Any group of middle-school-aged kids (school, church, neighborhood) can form a team.
* There is more time to build the robots.
* Students use Legos to construct their robots.
* Costs are much lower.
The 2004 FLL challenge has not been announced at the time of writing this article (it is announced in May), but in 2003 the challenge was called Mission Mars. According to this page the mission looks like this:
* The robot starts on a platform and must go down a ramp.
* The robot must load a canister onto a canister launcher and launch it.
* The robots must clear "dust" (Lego blocks) from a "solar panel" (a platform).
* The robot must move three "habitation modules" into position and connect them together.
* The robot must connect together two other "habitation modules."
* The robot must push a small Lego rover off of an area on the field known as the "sand dune."
* The robot must pick up and move three "ice cores" back to the base.
* The robot must move several Lego "boulders" into the "launch circle" on the playing field.
* The robot must pass over a low wall of Legos to prove its all-terrain ability.
