About First®

FIRST® is an organization founded in 1989 to inspire young peoples’ interest and
participation in Science and Technology. Based in Manchester, NH, this non-profit public
charity designs accessible innovative programs that motivate young people to pursue
educational and career opportunities in science, engineering, technology and mathematics while building self-confidence, knowledge, and life skills.

The Annual Challenge

The FTC program is the First Technical Challenge … one of the challenges presented by
FIRST to high school and middle school students. The Challenge changes annually, and it challenges students to build robots that can accomplish a number of tasks in the most
efficient manner. Once the Challenge is revealed in mid-September, each robotics team
designs, builds, programs and tests robots to accomplish the tasks presented in the
Challenge. They then compete with other teams to see who can score the highest number of points as defined in the Challenge. For the first part of the Challenge there is a 30 second period where the robot must operate autonomously. No human interface. At the end of this period there is a 90 second period where team members can control the robot by remote control to accomplish the other tasks. In competitive matches the teams are randomly matched with other teams to form “Alliances”, and two “Alliances” compete against each other. “Alliance” partners are then randomly changed for a number of subsequent matches, and the top teams are selected based on their overall scores when matched with the various partners. Final winners are selected in runoff elimination matches involving the top teams until a final pair of winners are determined.

This year’s challenge