2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Topic: ECE for non-engineers and K-12 students

The FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) has engaged about 87,400 students from grades 7 to 12 across 67 countries and regions in recent seasons. This competition tests students’ mechanical design, programming, and robot operation skills, all within the framework of an alliance-based floor game. Additionally, the FTC emphasizes the broader impacts of a team’s outreach activities. Teams advance based on their performance in the robotic game or recognition through awards such as Inspire, Think, Innovate, Control, Connect, Motivate, and Design. Despite the reported outcomes of the FTC program, few studies have explored FTC teams’ perspectives on their efforts, challenges, and resources. This study addresses the gap by surveying a large sample of FTC teams to identify the factors contributing to their growth.

A comprehensive survey was distributed to 264 FTC teams during the 2022 - 2023 season and 344 teams during the 2023 - 2024 season. One hundred eighty-four responses were collected from state and world competitions in 2023, and 267 were gathered at regional, state, and world championships in 2024. The survey covered 11 key metrics, examining team attributes such as whether they are school-affiliated or community-affiliated, team size, FTC experiences in years, training in technical and soft skills, team efforts, the culture of team collaboration, and available resources. Statistical analysis was conducted to understand differences among teams attending regional, state, and world competitions.

This paper presents the first study on the quantitative analysis of team attributes in FTC robotics competitions. We evaluated team performance at the regional, state, and world levels, quantifying improvements observed at each stage. Our survey reveals significant differences in weekly effort and training between teams that advanced to the world championships (9-12 hours per week) and those that did not.

The insights gained from this study provide valuable guidance on FTC team coaching and management, benefiting FTC coaches, team members, and event coordinators. Our findings suggest several key factors contributing to the growth and advancement of FTC teams to world-level competitions, including (1) consistent participation in off-season activities, (2) specialized technical training in programming, odometry, CAD, camera/image processing, and control, and (3) structured soft skills training in documentation and presentation. Notably, community-affiliated teams may have an advantage in these areas, as a greater number of them have advanced to world championships. By offering a data-driven perspective on training strategies, time allocation, and task assignments, these findings can help teams refine their preparation, enhance their competitiveness, and improve overall program effectiveness.