Robot control system is a FIRST
12 June 2008
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a non-profit organisation that inspires young people to be science and technology leaders, has selected the National Instruments’ (www.ni.com) CompactRIO embedded control platform as its next-generation FIRST Robotics competition robot controller.
NI is granting a multi-million dollar in-kind donation over the next five years to FIRST to provide the CompactRIO system to participating teams. Companies including Analog Devices, Boston Engineering, ChipX, Dove Electronics, Freescale, MSI, Texas Instruments, TTI, Westak, Wind River, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Xilinx have also collaborated to provide in-kind donations of components to build the CompactRIO control system.
More than 42,000 students in the FIRST Robotics competition will develop advanced robotics applications using the NI Robotics platform powered by the company’s NI LabView, and with this platform, students will create advanced robots starting in the 2009 FIRST season. Students can program their robots based on CompactRIO in either LabView graphical programming software, or the ANSI C language.
The CompactRIO modular I/O system offers connectivity to a wide array of sensor and actuator options and powerful real-time vision processing to build an advanced robot. Students will be able to create robots that may be driver-controlled or run in autonomous mode using the latest technologies including wireless monitoring and simulation for more in-competition control and more accurate designs.
Inventor Dean Kamen founded FIRST in 1989. He commented: “Our goal is to have a FIRST team in every high school and to change the culture in our communities to celebrate excellence in science and engineering in the same way we celebrate sports. It’s the support of partners like NI that is helping FIRST make that goal a reality.”
Ray Almgren, vice president of Academic Relations at National Instruments added: “We’ve chosen to partner with FIRST because we believe the science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) programme will have a substantial impact in creating more scientists and engineers. By adding CompactRIO and LabView to the robotics platform of their competition, FIRST will increase the technical capabilities of the teams’ robots while making the programming more accessible to a much larger and diverse group of students.”
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