FRC - First Robotics Competition - Not A Place To Learn Robotics
Dhananjay Kumar Singh
Founder | Roboprenr | On Mission 1B | Author | Coder | Robotics Evangelist | Coach
FRC is popular in USA, where it's a community driven clubs for high schoolers. For example in a team of 40 there will be 15 mentors, 25 students. The team groups together for 6-8 weeks and create a robot for the competition. The budget for one season comes to 30-40k USD, which students raises funds through donations and sponsorships from various companies. Children divide the team for handling different parts of the projects like robot model building, coding, AI, fund raising, logistics and team travel for competition.
Here is my understanding about pros and cons for FRC:
Pros:
1. Children get good exposure on robotics and experience of participating in a competition.
2. Children become aware of the robot building process which depends on collaboration between team members.
3. Fund raising and sponsorship will help develop entrepreneurial skill.
Cons:
1. There is very less scope for children who are beginner in robotics to learn technology as students who are already good at it will be doing most of the robot building.
2. FRC uses toolchains that are proprietary and are not applicable industry wide. Correct learning approach is through Open Source and Open Robotics technologies.
3. Mentors need to be knowledgable on technologies involved in robot building, which may not be scenario in many teams.
4. Focus is on building robot and not on learning technologies so majority of the team will have very superficial knowledge.
5. It is an expensive proposition as budget of 30-40k USD for one competition is very high.
6. Fund raising may be a time consuming activities.
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7. Children may not be able to explore their talent in particular area of robot building as if they are beginner they may never get chance to work on technology and will be involved in logistics or fund raising.
8. FRC is oriented towards high schoolers. Robotics learning should start much earlier than the high school.
All in all FRC is not the right place for learning robotics. It would be beneficial to only those handful of students, who are already proficient in robotics. In a school with thousands of students, only 25 will get chance to be part of the FRC team.
In Indian context FRC in current form wouldn't work due to following reasons:
? Long distance from the competition arena which will be in US
? Fund raising may not be easy specially when the budget is at least Rs 50L+
? Children in India are loaded with lot of academics as well so it will be difficult for them to cope up with the intensive time requirement.
Roboprenr program bypasses all these challenges:
1. Roboprenr has a comprehensive and well structured robotics program covering all aspect of robot building like electronics, coding, mechanical design, AI, 3D printing, PCB design, ROS and robot modeling. Every student gets to learn all these technologies from expert instructors. This exposure will help children to identify their strength, talent and interest.
2. Roboprenr uses all open source and open robotics technologies which has applicability in all the industries.
3. Roboprenr programs are cost effective and can be learnt for long time, which is important as tech learning should be continuous learning to build powerful technology skill.
4. Roboprenr is competition focused and prepares students for national and international competitions. Its cost effective as domestic travel is inexpensive and for that qualify for international round, only a small group will be required to travel.
So in nutshell don't go to FRC for learning how to build robots. Go to FRC when you already know how to build robots and you want to showcase your talent at the global scale.
Student at UW Seattle
5 个月Since you asked to know what observations of yours are inaccurate, here is a short list. This is by no means a complete list, but covers the things that stood out to me.? 1.”For example in a team of 40 there will be 15 mentors, 25 students” is not an accurate composition of most FRC teams. There is a minimum of 7 people needed (two adults, and five students) and no hard max on students or mentors, and so it varies between teams. 2. “The team groups together for 6-8 weeks and create a robot for the competition.” FRC teams often meet all year round. Build season, the 6-8 weeks you mention is a fraction of the time FRC teams spend together. 3. “It is an expensive proposition as budget of 30-40k USD for one competition is very high.” The 30-40k USD figure is not representative of most FRC teams budgets which range from the millions to on the low end a few thousand USD, but often teams will do between 1-7 events in the competition season, and 0-5 off-season events on their yearly budget. This program is something special to a lot of people, and to try and tear it down in this way, and especially to hawk another program, one that costs money to do, when FRC is often free for students, is understandably appalling to many.
Senior Electrical Technician
5 个月I think it's hard to quantify what students get out of FIRST. Even as a student and mentor previously, and volunteer now I don't think anyone can summarize what students gain from the program. I don't disagree with your statements, but I also think you are doing a great injustice to the program. It's not just for robots and generalizing it to be that is harsh. Students need to learn soft skills just as much or more than they need to learn about the robotics topics you discussed. If students go their whole academic life without learning how to work together and communicate with people of different levels of knowledge then I'm certainly not looking forward to the future of robotics.
Head of IT Audit at MassMutual
5 个月I agree with many of the other commenters here, FIRST is more than robots, it is about building a varied set of skills that will help individuals succeed in the future. In addition, you only cover FIRST Robotics Competition in your post, but there is also the FIRST Lego League for elementary aged students, and FIRST Tech Challenge for middle schoolers. It is better to assess the entire FIRST program and not just a piece of it.
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6 个月As someone who did FRC in high school to expand upon my interests in engineering and programing this is not at all correct. Sure some of the mentors might not be qualified for the area they are mentoring but FRC isn't ment to replace a college or university where said individual will go to earn a degree in an engineering or marketing field
Student ? Designer ?
6 个月As someone who did robotics in middle school (FLL) and in high school (FRC) I think your misunderstanding come from just looking at FRC. Within the first community they have the Lego league FLL which is made for younger children. I also think that there is a lot of teaching of robotics and how it works on teams. The team I am a mentor on has an entire coding program where you can go in having no idea how to code and learn from our lead mentor. My team also does the same in regards to building and design. It is quite an involved process and your analysis can be a detriment to the programs. I was also on a varsity sports team in high school and I learned more about being a team from FRC than I did on my sports team. Like many others have said, FIRST is not about the robot. They want students to be able to learn.