Cost and Financial Support (plus NASA telecast info.)

By now you may have heard what I announced yesterday - the pricing and the financial support we're providing to grow FTC in the coming year. In summary...

The new kit is a true competition kit. Some of the specifics include:

11 Motors (4 DC Drive, 4 Servo, 3 Lego)
10 Sensors
Rechargeable Batteries
3 complete sets of software (and team licenses)

The list goes on. In short it's everything you need to compete in a FIRST event in one package.

This kit, including software and licenses, would retail for about $4,000. We've worked hard with the commercial partners to drive down the cost of this kit to teams. The price to FIRST teams?

The price of the complete competition kit is $900.

As a non-profit organization FIRST is fortunate to have many great supporters. Several members of the FIRST Board of Directors (past and present) have generously donated funds to help teams and Affiliate Partners make the transition to the new platform.

Next year Affiliate Partners will receive $5,000 each to fund FTC events in their area. This is a one-year grant and will be used at their discretion for anything to do with putting on a great FTC event.

Over 800 teams competed in FTC this year. Returning teams will receive $450 toward the price of the new kit. They'll register with FTC and then be eligible for the grant.

Finally, we'll offer 250 need based rookie team grants of $450 for the 2008 season. Those same rookie teams will receive another $275 next season.

We're committed to bringing teams who have been with FTC with us to an exciting new platform that will challenge FTC teams with real-world challenges.

I'll keep this blog up and running to announce more details about ordering and kit of parts detail.

Stay tuned!
Ken

PS - Check out: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/robotics/first/atlanta-finals-2008/ to get a look at this years FTC Championship. At about 4:15pm we'll run the showcase (new platform) championship on the Dome floor. It will be telecast by NASA via the link.

Compass Sensor Driving

This video was prepared by one of the pilot teams. It's a demonstration of combining sensor (compass) and driver control to make the robot work more efficiently.

Cool stuff.



Stay tuned,
Ken

Showcase Robot - drive train development

One of the requirements for the pilot teams was to provide FIRST with video footage of their build. I'll post more in the next few days however I thought you might be interested in seeing part of the drive train development from one team.



Stay Tuned,
Ken

Roll up to Championship

The pace leading up to Championship is frenetic for teams and FIRST. In addition to pulling together some video of actual showcase robots we're also collecting feedback from showcase pilot teams on kit contents and cost. This is all in order to provide teams with a kit that meets their needs.

Our philosophy for FTC remains the same - provide a cost effective platform that challenges teams using today's technology. The kit we'll roll out at Championship will be a complete "competition" kit as opposed to a commercial base kit requiring multiple additional components to compete.

FIRST is committed to growing the FTC and serving our community with the best combination of capability, cost, and performance. We'll have more information for you later this week.

Ken