FIRST Robotics Competition Blog

Kickoff

I hope you have this date and time marked on whatever technology or device you use for marking dates and times: January 8th at Noon Eastern Time.  It’s the FIRST Robotics Competition Kickoff presented by Ford, and I am so excited to get this season officially underway! Join us live on FIRSTtv, or you can sign up for a tune-in reminder on our Kickoff page. Please note it’s Noon Eastern Time, rather than in the morning Eastern Time as we have done in the past. This is to help teams in the western part of North America get a little later start to their days if they choose. 

Also, please note this is streaming live exclusively on Twitch, per our agreement with them. We recognize many schools block Twitch on their networks. Kickoff locations at those schools will need to request Twitch be unblocked for that day or use other means (within school rules, please) to access Twitch, such as wireless hot spots. We’re letting all the Kickoff Coordinators know about this of course, so they should be ready!

You want merch for Kickoff? We've got merch. Hats! Shirts! Blankets! Water bottles! Safety vests! Metric tons of merch. Merch, by the boatload. Merch for the new season that says "We're back, baby! (Yeah, we are)" Check it out at the FIRST Store.

Teaser

In case you missed it, check out the final teaser for the 2022 season. If this doesn’t scream ‘water game,’ I don’t know what a water game is.

Wood Field List of Materials

Edit: The List of Materials was updated to V1 to correct two errors: change the length of reflective material from 60 in. to 80 in. and change the quantity of 4 ft. x 8 ft. x 1/8 in. thick clear polycarbonate sheet from 1 to 2. Our apologies for any inconvenience! 

Here’s the list of materials you will need to build all the complex versions of the field components. The complex versions offer the highest degree of representation. Simpler, less expensive, but less representative versions will be available after Kickoff.

In the past, we provided different levels of materials lists, trying to guess breakpoints for teams that wanted to ‘build it all’ versus ‘build it some.’ But we don’t know how useful the ‘some’ list is, as every team will analyze the game themselves and determine what makes sense for them to build, after thinking about their strategy and the room/resources they have available. So, this year, we’re just giving the ‘build it all’ list as we know for sure there are teams that will want to do that. For teams that don’t want to go for the full deluxe pie*, we recommend waiting until after kickoff to see what you want to build. Full drawings will be released then, and you can make the best decision for your team.

It’s really happening!!!

Frank

*Mmmmmm. Deluxe pie.