FIRST Robotics Competition Blog

Improved Match Scheduling

We hear you. This season, because of the way the FIRST STEAMWORKS’ field is configured, team station assignments can have a significant impact on gameplay. 

FIRST friends Tom and Cathy Saxton, from Idle Loop Software Design, LLC, who created and donated to FIRST the match scheduling system we’ve been using for years, have made an improvement to the software in response to this concern. The improved software now attempts to balance station assignment, significantly reducing the chance that any one team will be playing ‘too many’ matches at an event from a single station. We’ll be using this software this season. Full details on this change can be found here and you will see this change referenced in Team Update 08, being released today.

Thanks, Tom and Cathy!

FIRST Global

Some of you have asked questions about an activity called FIRST Global.  FIRST Global is a worldwide, Olympic-style, robotic-competition event separate from, but complementary to, FIRST. It was founded by Dean Kamen, and you can learn more about this from Dean here.

Frank