Start a FIRST team and help inspire the next generation of engineering innovators! Few activities offer the diversity of opportunities to engage young people in the fun and excitement of engineering...
PLUS, ASME members can help participating high school seniors win up to $5,000 in scholarship funds. Find out how!INTRODUCTION
The need to excite high school students about math, science and engineering has never been stronger. While many companies and organizations have established bridges with local schools to help ensure the future presence of a qualified work force, few programs have been developed on the national level. One successful program is the national robotics competition known as FIRST.

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) conducts regional and national design competitions that demonstrate that engineering and science can be as interesting, captivating, and entertaining as a sporting event. The competition requires an intense six-week project for which industries and universities team with local high schools to design, construct, and control a remotely operated vehicle for a sports-based playoff whose objective changes each year.

The FIRST competition is a large scale, made-for-television engineering competition that shows youth that no other career compares to one in science and engineering. Each team starts off with the same standard kit of parts and uses its creativity to design and build a vehicle capable of performing a demanding task better than its opponents. Teams made up of high school students, industrial engineers, and sometimes university students, join together in this hands-on project to build the better robot.

Since the goals of FIRST parallel ASME's own goals of improving math and science education for grades K-12, ASME supports the mission of FIRST. In fact, ASME and FIRST have entered into a formal partnership to promote technical literacy. FIRST was founded by ASME member Dean Kamen, and the national adviser to FIRST is ASME member Professor Woodie Flowers from MIT. The FIRST competition is an opportunity for ASME members and their companies to improve the technical literacy of our society by doing something in their own communities.

This guide was prepared to help ASME members start new teams to participate in the FIRST competition. While specific information regarding the schedule, fees, and rules of each competition are available directly from FIRST, this guide has been prepared to offer insights to ASME members that can help them be successful.

DECIDING TO PARTICIPATE 
Participating in FIRST is a way to celebrate the engineering profession locally and nationally. Participating in FIRST is a commitment that will require a lot of energy, but that effort will make a positive impact in many other peoples' lives. Being devoted to helping others reach their full potential must be your primary reason for starting a FIRST team.

Your project will work because you, as an individual, have stepped forward to make something good happen. FIRST succeeds because individuals, like yourself, have decided to not simply talk, but instead, take action to improve the lives of others in their own community.

Starting a team undoubtedly requires time, talent, and resources. As an engineer, you have the talent to start and manage a FIRST team. As an engineer, you have access to the resources needed for sponsoring and supporting a FIRST team. As a person, you must decide that this project is worth the time you will put into it.

While it is impossible to make such a judgment with limited knowledge of the rewards of participating in FIRST, the experiences from fellow ASME members are evidence that your time will be well spent. ASME members that have participated in FIRST return to participate in following years, and some have even started teams after being relocated to new regions of the country. 

BUILDING A TEAM 
A FIRST team may range in size from a small group of a few engineers and high school students to a small army of engineers, students, faculty, and parents. The secret of building a successful team is not to assemble the largest team possible, but to assemble a team that can work well together. To accomplish this, the team must recognize and capitalize on the unique abilities of each member of the team.

To understand what is needed to build a FIRST team, it is important to realize that the FIRST project is more than the not-so-simple task of designing and building a robot from a standard set of raw materials. It involves such diverse aspects as financing the project, coordinating logistics, arranging press coverage for your team, and documenting the impact your team has made in your community.

Other than having pre-college students as the robot drivers and on-field players, there are no other rules that specify who else has to be on a team. Typically, a FIRST team will include some combination of the following categories of people: 

High School Students  All students have different talents and enjoy different activities, and the FIRST project is a forum for these individual talents to shine. Though the goal of FIRST is to motivate students to pursue careers in science and engineering, the participating students need not be primarily interested in these fields. There is room on the team for every type of student. By their participation, many become attracted to engineering and others leave with an appreciation for and an understanding of the engineering profession.
For example, a student who likes writing can be assigned as the team’s publicist to handle press relations, a student with vocational training can help build the robot, a student strong in math may calculate the required geometry for the robot, a student that enjoys computers can develop a web page for the team, and a student interested in art can design the team’s logo and robot aesthetics. In short, every ability can be applied to the project.

Teachers  Faculty involvement is critical for the project. The faculty members serve not merely as supervisors, but also as coaches for specific components of the project. Their involvement is crucial to generate enthusiasm and support for the project from within the school system.

Industry Engineers and Technicians   For many teams, this group is the nucleus of the project team. Ideally, the following people are needed in this group: an electrician, a machinist, a computer programmer, and at least two engineers, one of whom should have experience in product development. Government employees from technical research centers operated by the U.S. government are included in the industry participants’ category.

University Faculty and Students   A number of FIRST teams include university participants. There are many ways for university students and faculty to participate in FIRST. Some schools use FIRST as an undergraduate capstone design project while others participate as a student professional society activity or incorporate FIRST in their graduate curriculum.

Others  This group includes interested parents, community members, retired teachers/engineers, and non-engineering industry representatives. Typically, this group coordinates any or all parts of the project beyond the design and construction of the robot. Having one industry team member from the public affairs office or the company’s executive office is a smart way to help secure the resources, exposure, and recognition that is critical to the project’s success.

Though the distribution of these five components varies from team to team, there are generally four types of teams that participate in FIRST: an industry-high school partnership, a university-high school partnership, an industry-university-high school partnership, and a coalition team. While the first three team-types are self-explanatory and involve a single high school, industry and/or university, the coalition team involves multiple companies, universities and/or high schools competing as a single team. For example, one company may elect to sponsor a team that represents each high school in a school system, and, as a result, have four high schools represented on a single team. As another example, a group of small companies may join together to collectively sponsor and staff a single team.

During the project, the students witness the leadership needed to run organizations, and many students will be put in positions where they must lead critical elements of the project. The critical criterion for the team is its ability to work with each other to complete the many individual tasks needed to create a competitive robot. As such, the size of the team, beyond a minimum core of four able adults and a group of interested students, does not matter. What does matter is assembling a group that can respect each other’s opinions, achieve consensus, and work together.

Perhaps the best operating perspective is to view your FIRST team as your own personal company. You certainly want to have a successful business, so you want to involve the best people on your team. You will need to “hire” effective managers for your company: people that can follow a chain of command, receive delegated responsibilities, and deliver the required products. These managers must direct the work of motivated and energetic employees (that may be students, faculty, parents, or industry participants). Like the real world, you will need to work hard to recruit talented people to join your company.

You must convince others to accept the same realization that you made when you committed to the FIRST project: yes, this will take time, but there are few opportunities that can give a better return on the investment. To recruit these people, videos of previous FIRST competitions can be an important resource. Let them watch the videos on their own, and afterwards approach them to join your team. 

FINANCING A TEAM
Few programs give a larger bang for the buck than FIRST.  Like your personal decision to invest your time in FIRST because you receive a valuable return on your investment, the financial costs associated with FIRST must be evaluated in a similar fashion. The financial cost must be evaluated relative to the return on the investment.

In addition to the entrance fee for each competition ($6,000 for the first competition you enter; $4,000 for subsequent regional competitions, and $5,000 of the Championship), there are other items that each FIRST team must fund. These include travel for team members to attend the Kickoff Workshop, building materials, administrative costs, shipping, uniforms, and team travel to the competition. Though there are exceptions, the minimum budget needed for a FIRST team is approximately $10,000 - $15,000. This budget covers expenses and does not include the financial value of the engineers and faculty volunteers that participate in the project.

Comparisons illustrate the return on investment in the FIRST project. Costs of $3,000 a person for one-week professional training courses are not uncommon in industry. Past industry participants in FIRST have vouched that they have learned more through the FIRST project than in any professional training course. Also, Baxter Healthcare Corporation and Procter & Gamble have sanctioned the FIRST competition as product management and prototype development activities for their engineers.

The financial models used by FIRST teams vary as much as the makeup of the teams themselves. In all cases though, cost sharing is a common attribute of each team’s finances. Under the cost-sharing model, all components of the team contribute to the project budget. For example, the corporation may fund the entrance fee, construction costs, and travel costs for their employees. In this case, the high school would be responsible for the travel costs of the students and minor administration costs. As a source of funding, many of the high schools solicit donations from local businesses and initiate fundraising projects to pay travel expenses for members to attend the competitions.

Any needed fundraising should take place during the period before the competition. The six weeks of the construction phase pass by too quickly to devote any of that time to fundraising. This time is also a good time for the support and public relations components of your team to work together and practice some of the skills they will need during the competition.

COMPETITION  PREPARATION
Though the competition does not begin until the first week of January, it is never too soon to prepare for the competition. Since the competition game changes each year, there is no way to build your robot ahead of time, but there are many other things you can do to practice for the competition. This pre-season time is the right time to organize your team and identify key people to lead the engineering, management, and operation sections of your team. Activities such as creativity exercises, studying previous competition game videos, and working with some of the actual kit components are worthwhile team projects to gain valuable experience and promote teamwork.

Sparking Creativity  There are many types of creativity exercises to introduce high school students to engineering problem solving. Weekly pizza-powered mini-tutorials on engineering concepts, electronics, and the design process are a popular way to introduce them to fundamental concepts needed to design and build the robot. The tutorials also act as an icebreaker activity to help the team members begin to know, trust, and value each other.

Learning By Doing  Teams can witness the range of possibilities that can be created from the standard kit of parts by reviewing videos of past competitions and classifying observations. For example, each year the robots must move, pick up or move another object, and probably lift that object. Using these three functions, you can break up your team into groups to review old competitions and study how these tasks were accomplished. By requiring the groups to classify methods for each task (propulsion, grabbing objects, and lifting) they can visually dissect the video images to see the engineering involved in the project.

Once you classify mechanisms types for each of these three movements, your team can try to build some of these components using materials purchased from a hardware store. Though you do not know for certain that battery-powered hand drills will be a part of the kit, assuming so would be a safe bet. To understand how the rotational motion of a hand drill can be efficiently converted to transitional motion, the team could design and build a hand-drill-powered propulsion system.

Similarly, another part of your team could design and build a device to grab an object, while yet another group designs and builds a device to lift up an object. Purchase small, high speed, low torque DC motors to investigate the gear reductions necessary for your prototype devices. Through these projects, the team should begin to see the difficulty in constructing physical systems that operate as intended. Materials such as plywood and sheet insulation are useful for prototyping.

Safety Education   Teams must learn about and practice safety procedures. All members of the team should know proper safety procedures, and each team must take responsibility for its own actions and the actions of those on the team. Each member should be comfortable calling a timeout whenever they observe a safety violation, and all members of the team should be briefed on the violation.

In addition to learning about design and construction techniques necessary for the competition, these activities serve as a test of the team’s operation. By conducting these pre-event building activities, your team can evaluate your logistical plans regarding meeting locations, shop and tool availability, procedures for purchasing parts, and team organization. Spend time identifying problems to correct during the months before the competition begins.

THE COMPETITION
The competition begins in early January at the Kickoff when the game for the year is unveiled and the kit of parts distributed. The Kickoff is shrouded in secrecy to ensure that the game is revealed to all teams at the same time. With Dean Kamen and Woodie Flowers standing before team representatives, a signal is given, the curtains surrounding the playing field lift, and the game is revealed to all participants.

Six weeks later, you have to ship your completed robot to a regional competition. Six weeks is a tight time frame to go from problem statement to final product, and you need a clear plan of action.

The most important aspect of your design is that it must be able to play the game. You can only inspire the high school students if you design and build a robot that can gather objects, take them somewhere, and score points. The design need not be elegant, the construction need not be production quality, and the operation need not be the smoothest, but, in the end, your robot must work. Having a robot that is unable to play the game severely limits your ability to inspire the high school students on your team. 

Creating a Schedule  The engineering design process is an ideal framework to structure your team’s activities during these six weeks. Your team must understand the game, design several alternatives to compete in the game, evaluate the alternatives and select the best solution, construct that solution, test the completed design, and then improve the design to operate efficiently. Keeping pace with a construction schedule is a must. You must always know where you stand.

One schedule is presented as a template for the six-week construction phase of the competition. Each team is free to solve the problem of designing a competitive robot however it wishes. This scenario is only a suggestion to structure your own action and does not prescribe methods that you must follow.

Local Kickoff   While the FIRST Kickoff is held in Manchester, NH, a number of Regional Kickoffs are held simultaneous with the Manchester event, and live broadcasts are used to reveal the game.  The Kickoff is also broadcast live on the Internet, thereby allowing anyone to view the action in real time.  To get your own team moving, you will need to have your own “local Kickoff” as soon as possible to unveil the game to all team members. After revealing the game, you should pass out copies of the relevant sections of the game rules and divide your team into five sub-groups.

Week 1: DESIGNING THE ROBOT
Throughout the first week, your five sub-groups could each independently design, on paper, a robot that can play the game. Their designs should meet the constraints of the competition and must be able to function using the material in the kit. At the end of the week, each group could present their design to the entire group, and the team could decide which solution is the best one to pursue. During this week, any team members that are not part of the design group should construct a full-scale version of the playing field and goal. This playing field will help generate ideas, test concepts, and train drivers.

Week 2:  SUBSYSTEM DESIGN  
At the end of the first week, divide the team’s chosen design into five major subsystems, assigning individuals to each subsystem team. During the second week of the competition, these subsystem teams conduct a detailed design of their subsystem, and then construct a working prototype of that subsystem. This prototype need not use material from the kit of parts, and in fact it is advised not to use actual components from the kit of parts at this early stage. Useful materials for these prototypes include cardboard, wood, and sheet foam insulation.

By the end of the second week, the working prototype should demonstrate that the subsystem design is indeed feasible with the supplies in the kit and constraints of the competition. Also at this time, one person should be responsible for tracking the components that are needed for each subsystem, assigning kit components to each subsystem, and monitoring the weight and size of each subsystem. In essence, this person serves as the accountant for the project, assigns components for each subsystem to use, and records all parts that are needed by each subsystem.

Weeks 3 & 4: SUBSYSTEM CONSTRUCTION  
Devote the third and fourth weeks of the competition to assembling “finished products” of each subsystem. These subsystems must now be constructed using components from the kit and other materials allowed for in the rules. During this time, your logistics sub-team, construction tools, and shop facilities will be heavily taxed as each day is critical to remain on schedule. During this time, each designed subsystem should operate under power, (for example by powering a motor directly off a battery) and the operating characteristics of the subsystems must be evaluated.

Week 5:  DESIGN INTEGRATION  
The fifth week of the competition should be devoted to assembling the subsystems into a final product. Throughout the previous two weeks, each of the individual subsystem teams must be constantly communicating with each other to ensure the subsystems’ compatibility. Despite this communication, it is unlikely that all components will fit and operate as designed, and thus devoting an entire week to making the system work together is not unreasonable. 

Week 6: TESTING & DRIVER TRAINING  
Testing and driver training should dominate the final week of the construction phase. Providing ample time for testing and driver training is advice echoed by all veteran FIRST teams. A machine is only as good as its drivers and coaches. Practicing with an operating robot is an effective method to evaluate strategies, identify strengths and weaknesses of a machine, and find design components that need improvement. During the off-hours, clean and paint the robot to transform a collection of metal, wood, fiberglass, and PVC into a professional-looking machine. 

AND A FEW MORE THINGS...  
Before shipping the robot, it would be wise to make exact measurements of components that you intend to duplicate as spares. For example, shafts, chain, sprockets, gears and critical structural elements should all have spares. Also, you should outfit a toolbox to repair your robot during the competition.

Throughout this intense six-week construction project, your team must also document the impact the project is making on the community. Teams forward this information electronically to their chosen Regional during the sixth week of the project.  Judges evaluate the entries for the premier award associated with the Competition. Also during this time, teams should finalize logistics for attending the regional and Championship competitions.

Once you have some working components of the robot completed, invite the press to see your team in action. In general, press interest parallels the construction of the robot: there is little for them to see during the design phase, the prototypes don’t photograph especially well, but the completed subsystems are parts that they can understand, and the completed robot makes a huge impression on people.

You will have at least a week to relax before the actual competition, and you will need it to recover from the past six weeks and prepare for the next few weeks. To put it mildly, the competitions themselves are intense. So much time has been devoted to the project, and everyone wants to do well.

By now, there is little you can really prepare for that you haven’t covered in the earlier weeks. Your team should be well organized and the chain of command for decision-making should be clear. The logistics and support components of the team should direct the efforts of the team members while the engineering crew concentrates on keeping the robot in operating form. Above all, take in the grandeur of the competition, see the enthusiasm in thousands of high school students’ faces, and take pride in the fact that your personal commitment to others made this possible.

JOIN US!
ASME is partnering with FIRST to expand the number of young people and engineers that are influenced by this project. The greatest service that ASME can provide to this partnership is to solicit the support of ASME members who are interested in starting teams.

For additional information on the FIRST Competition, the names of fellow ASME/FIRST participants are included below. Each of these members is willing to share their FIRST experience to help others understand the great value of the FIRST competition and start new teams. ASME members are welcome to use contacts as references to help build and manage successful FIRST teams.

If you are an ASME member who has participated in FIRST and would like to assist other members participating in this project, please contact the ASME Manager of Public Awareness (see below) to add your name to this contact list.

• Vince Wilczynski ASME/FIRST liaison, Judge Advisor-860-444-8678- vw@alum.mit.edu
• Bill Nott, ASME Pre-College Education-408-742-3632- nottw@asme.org