Increasing computer science participation in the FIRST robotics competition with robot simulation
Caitlin Buckhaults · 2009
The FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition is an international program aimed at inspiring high school students to pursue careers in science and technology through a yearly challenge in which teams of students design and build robots with which to compete against other teams from all over the world. The teams are given 6 weeks to create a competitive robot; the greatest amount of time is dedicated to building the mechanical and electrical systems. Since the software cannot be tested and debugged until after the mechanical and electrical subsystems are functional and nearly complete, programmers have minimal time with the robot, and thus, encounter great difficulty in developing and optimizing their control code. Implementing the robot and the contest environment in a simulator such as Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio allows students to develop their software and hardware concurrently. This greatly improves individual team performance in the competition and provides students with increased exposure to software design, which should result in increased numbers of students entering into computing careers.