FIRST Robotics Competition
FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is an international high school robotics competition. Each year, teams of high school students, coaches, and mentors work during a six-week period to build robots capable of competing in that year's game that weigh up to 125 pounds (57 kg). Robots complete tasks such as scoring balls into goals, placing inner tubes onto racks, hanging on bars, and balancing robots on balance beams. The game, along with the required set of tasks, changes annually. While teams are given a kit of a standard set of parts during the annual Kickoff, they are also allowed and encouraged to buy or fabricate specialized parts. FIRST Robotics Competition is one of five robotics competition programs organized by FIRST, the other four being FIRST LEGO League Discover, FIRST LEGO League Explore, FIRST LEGO League Challenge, and FIRST Tech Challenge.
| Current season, competition or edition: Crescendo (FIRST) | |
| Sport | Robotics-related games |
|---|---|
| Founded | Dean Kamen Woodie Flowers |
| Inaugural season | 1992 |
| Commissioner | Collin Fultz |
| Motto | "More Than Robots" |
| No. of teams | 3,225 (2022) |
| Countries | 26 countries and regions |
| Most recent champion(s) | 1323 - "MadTown Robotics" 4414 - "HighTide" 4096 - "Ctrl-Z" 2609 - "BeaverworX" (2023) |
| Most titles | 254 - "The Cheesy Poofs" (5 championship wins) |
The culture of FIRST Robotics Competition is built around two values. "Gracious Professionalism" embraces the competition inherent in the program but rejects trash talk and chest-thumping, instead embracing empathy and respect for other teams. "Coopertition" emphasizes that teams can cooperate and compete at the same time. The goal of the program is to inspire students to be science and technology leaders.
2022 was the 31st year of the competition. 3,225 teams, including more than 80,000 students and 25,000 mentors from 26 countries, built robots. The 2022 season included 58 Regional Competitions, 90 District Qualifying Competitions, and 11 District Championships. In 2022, over 450 teams won slots to attend the FIRST Championship event, where they competed in a 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. As a result of COVID-19, the amount of active teams decreased during the 2021 season; however, numbers began to increase during the 2022 season.
As of 2023, there were 3,300 high school teams with approximately 83,000 high schoolers across 31 countries competing.
Most teams reside in the United States, with Canada, Turkey, Mexico, Israel, China, and Australia contributing significant numbers of teams.