Updates on the Future Robot Controller
March 19, 2025
The first wave of Systemcore Alpha testing began back in June with 50 FIRST® Robotics Competition teams. Since then, the chosen Alpha teams have been working on putting Systemcore through its paces, including many teams running it at numerous offseason events. Those teams have been reporting their progress and feedback using the testing project on GitHub. The Limelight and WPILib teams have been working hard to address the software feedback and continue rolling out new features, and the Limelight team has been root-causing reported hardware failures to ensure any issues discovered are addressed in the final hardware revision. While we can’t yet share the exact cost to teams for Systemcore, we are on target to meet our goal of offering Systemcore at a lower price than the roboRIO.
When the first wave of Alpha testing was announced, we shared that the second wave of testing, focused more on FIRST® Tech Challenge teams, was expected to start in September. Some changes to the design, requested by FIRST®, of the MotionCore module have delayed that timeline a bit, but we are still confident we are on track for implementation in the 2027-’28 FIRST Tech Challenge season. We are working on finalizing some details regarding Motioncore and hope to share a more complete picture for FIRST Tech Challenge soon.
In the meantime, we encourage FIRST Tech Challenge teams interested in participating in Alpha testing to fill out the application form as soon as possible. We’re eager to get started with testing, so we will likely be doing team selection shortly after we share system details. We know it may not be 100% clear what the testing expectations are without the details of the full system, so we want to reassure teams that we will be reaching out to get positive confirmation from chosen participants before announcing selected teams publicly.
We also have some news to share from Emerson regarding LabVIEW support for Systemcore:
Emerson is excited to continue its support of FIRST through the exploration of enabling NI LabVIEW on the next-generation control system for both the FIRST Robotics Competition and FIRST Tech Challenge.
Over the coming months, the NI team at Emerson will be working closely with FIRST control system developers to evaluate and test the new Systemcore controller for full support with the LabVIEW Community Edition. This will simplify licensing, installation, and allow teams to develop LabVIEW code across major operating systems.
For decades, NI LabVIEW has empowered engineers, scientists, and students around the world to solve complex problems and accelerate innovation, from groundbreaking research at CERN and NASA’s rocket propulsion testing, to life-saving medical advancements at Stryker.
Stay tuned to the blog for continued updates on Systemcore and Motioncore!