FIRST Robotics Competition

Company: FIRST
Industry: Education

Students push the limits of robotics and each other.

Founded by Dean Kamen nearly 20 years ago, FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) has become the “Super Bowl of Smarts™,” inspiring today’s students to think, create, and innovate in a forum of “gracious professionalism.”

The competition now boasts 1,500 teams and 37,000 high-school students from around the world, who are given six weeks to design and build a robot capable of completing a specified task. To help students design, analyze, and manufacture their concepts, Autodesk provides professional-grade design software to the teams. To further foster learning and inspiration, Autodesk created FIRSTbase in 2007, a competition-specific website offering free software downloads and technical support, online training, collaborative workspaces, and much more to participants.