Meet the 2023 Inspire the Future: FIRST Educators Recognition Program Honorees
May 8, 2023
Blog authored by: Fiona Hanlon, FIRST® Robotics Competition Team Experience Program Function Manager
Last year, we introduced the concept of a KitBot where teams were provided with a basic robot design, parts, and instructions to build a robot tailored to the season’s game. We wanted to take some time to share some of the feedback we saw on the 2024 KitBot and some improvements that we are making for the 2025 season.
One of the main goals of the KitBot was to provide a baseline design and resource that helped raise the floor. It was intended to provide a starting point that teams could iterate on and improve. It was specifically designed to not be able to do all the tasks in the game. Based on data provided to us by Team 118, there were 528 KitBots that competed in the 2024 season, or 15% of teams.
2024 Feedback
In our end of season survey, we asked both students and mentors several questions about the KitBot.
The first question we want to highlight is about why teams built the KitBot. One thing we had heard anecdotally was that some teams were choosing to build the KitBot solely to help with training new students and mentors and that they didn’t plan to use that robot at events. This data does show that a significant number of teams did that, which is an unintended benefit from the KitBot.
We also wanted to understand how each team's overall experience with the KitBot was, and their level of satisfaction with it. As shown below, you can see that 66.2% of Students and 73.13% of Mentors were either Satisfied or Very Satisfied with the KitBot.
We also asked teams if they iterated on the KitBot. As mentioned above, the KitBot was intended to be a starting point for teams, but we really wanted to see teams make improvements. Based on the responses, most teams did.
2025 Planned Improvements
Taking all of the feedback from our community into account, as well as lessons learned from our first KitBot, we have some planned changes to improve the process and experience for teams.
We’ve made changes to the KitBot design process that we think will lead to a more reliable KitBot for teams to start with. The changes also enable us to do more testing with the robot and specific components to see how it behaves through an entire match, as well as lifespan testing with the mechanism(s) to determine how it may change over time. Feedback on the code and guides was generally positive, but some folks did suggest that it was confusing to show many ways of doing things squished into one project. To address this, we will be splitting things up a bit and providing multiple projects for some languages to show slightly different approaches.
Additionally, we are planning to improve our pre-Kickoff communication. We don’t have any solid data on this, but we do believe that how we communicated about the KitBot was not perfect and may have led teams to opt in or out of the Black Tote based on what we stated. With that, we wanted to start now and share more details to help teams make decisions before the Black Tote and Drive Base opt-out deadline (Sep. 24th 12pm noon ET).
Last year, we stated that many of the items from the Black Tote that are used to build the KitBot are components that Veteran teams likely already have on hand or can easily replicate, and the robot design ended up with custom components. While we have not yet finalized the design for 2025, we do know that there will be custom design components included in the Kit. Additionally, we hope to include as many components of the KitBot in the Black Tote as possible and are actively working on sourcing the items. We expect some of the larger raw materials will need to be sourced by teams and we will provide a shopping list closer to Kickoff.
Finally, I will end with my favorite piece of feedback that I heard while attending events this year which was “The KitBot is the best thing to happen in FIRST® in a long time.” I so agree and I want to thank those who helped us with implementing the KitBot and to everyone who helped provide feedback on their experiences. Looking forward to the 2025 season!