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For 30 years, FIRST Robotics has been hosting games based off of different topics to promote various robotics teams from around the world to compete with each other. On January 6, 2024 the latest theme, CRESCENDO℠, was announced for the current season.
What is FIRST Robotics?
In 1989, Dean Kamen founded FIRST Robotics (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) with the intent to prepare the future generations for a STEM future. By 1992, 28 robotics teams gathered to participate in the initial FIRST event. Over the years, Kamen continued to unite people from around the world to create robots that can undergo a series of tasks and compete with other robots in a competition. Due to the teamwork required to find solutions to the various problems given, many mentorship relationships between young people and STEM professionals developed, which strengthened and taught children to gain confidence to learn new skills. Currently, FIRST still works to inspire the recent generations to engage in STEM fields and now works as a global nonprofit organization.
Dean Kamen (founder of FIRST Robotics) speaks to the teams competing in the FIRST Robotics competition. @mlive.com
What is CRESCENDO?
On January 6, FIRST held this year’s Kickoff Event where they unveiled the latest game, CRESCENDO, for the new robotics season. This game calls for participating teams to make a robot that can score points through various types of methods. For some of these methods, teams will have to build mechanisms in their robot that can intake the game’s element, shoot the element into a goal, or climb. To learn more about this season’s game click here.
FIRST Robotics has been operating for a little over three decades for the sole purpose of teaching and inspiring others to look into the STEM workfield. If you want to learn more about FIRST Robotics and the programs they offer, click here.
Here are some sources if you want to keep updated on some of the teams that are preparing for the competitions:
FIRST: Official FRC website.
FIRSTRoboticsCompetition: FIRST's Official Youtube that explains CRESCENDO’s fine details and aspects.
Robot in 3 Days: Provides strategy updates for CRESCENDO.
First Updates Now: Provides ideas for different aspects of the mechanisms that can be built for a robot and shows prototypes from current participating FIRST teams.