Long before a student decides on a college major or a career, they need someone, or something, to put a wrench, a line of code, or a robot in their hands and say, “you can do this.” FIRST® Robotics Competition opens the door and shows students that engineering is a future they can step into by giving them the chance to build, code, compete, and belong. For more than 15 years, NI has been part of that moment for thousands of students around the world.
The growth of the program tells that story better than I ever could. In 2009, the first year that teams competed using the original NI CompactRIO, there were 1,680 FIRST Robotics Competition teams and 48 official events. In 2026, there were 3,768 teams and 203 events spanning the globe. This shows the growth in the number of students who found their way into engineering, programming, and systems thinking because a program, and a technology partner, helped make that path accessible to them.
The true legacy of the partnership between FIRST® and NI is a generation of engineers who exist because the door was open, and NI helped keep it open.
The Technology That Made Full Participation Possible
Full participation means giving students real tools to work with and supporting them through the process. In 2009, NI introduced FIRST Robotics Competition teams to the CompactRIO (cRIO), a customized controller built specifically with FIRST in mind, giving students hands-on experience with the same Real-Time processor and FPGA architecture used by professional engineers every day. A few years later, NI released a streamlined four-slot version to better fit teams’ needs.
In 2015, that passion and commitment to helping teams succeed evolved into the NI roboRIO, a smaller, lighter, and more powerful controller, purpose-built for competition robotics, with a second-generation version following in 2022. This gave teams a common foundation to build from and the same industry-grade platform supported by LabVIEW's ability to meet students at different skill levels and grow with them.
A Partnership Carried by People, Not Just Products
Making engineering experiences available to students takes more than hardware on a shelf. For more than 15 years, NI’s support of FIRST has shown up in the people who chose to be there, season after season. For many volunteers, FIRST is more than just any STEM program. It has been a deeply meaningful way to support students and represent a mission they are passionate about.
Employee volunteers and mentors whose commitment to FIRST reflected a genuine belief in its purpose. They wanted to inspire the next generation of engineers and help students see a future for themselves in STEM. They volunteered as Control System Advisors and offered technical support teams, making sure that a controller issue never became the reason a student’s FIRST experience ended early.
NI offered free and discounted software and hardware access, including a free NI cRIO and later NI roboRIO, and LabVIEW licenses to every new team, lowering the barrier to entry for schools and community teams without deep resources.
NI also supported teams and partners with local and regional sponsorship, including multi-decade support of FIRST events across the communities where NI operates, including Texas and St. Louis in the US, Costa Rica, Debrecen, Hungary, and Penang, Malaysia.
From left to right: Zahra Karim, Isabella Cratem, and Zakky Momin
The Legacy Continues
As FIRST Robotics Competition officially transitions from the use of NI’s RIO family of controllers, we want to take a moment to give a sincere “thank you” to NI for their years of support of FIRST. On behalf of the thousands of young people whose lives were changed by participating in FIRST Robotics Competition, and the role NI played in supporting the program, thank you!
That legacy does not end with a controller transition. NI, now part of Emerson, remains a FIRST Strategic Partner, with continued support that includes LabVIEW on Systemcore, local team sponsorship, and mentorship. Early work is already underway to bring LabVIEW to the next generation of FIRST control systems. As long-time NI/Emerson volunteer Mile Oporta put it, "The future looks brighter with so many talented, passionate, and amazing FIRST participants." The technology will keep evolving. What won’t change is the reason NI showed up in the first place: to help make sure that any student, anywhere, who wonders whether engineering could be for them gets the chance to find out that it is.
Thank you, NI!
Learn more about FIRST supporters: https://www.firstinspires.org/about/our-supporters