FIRST Tech Challenge
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Way More Than Building Robots
Guided by adult coaches and mentors, students develop STEM skills and practice engineering principles while realising the value of hard work, innovation and working as a team.
Code, Design and Compete with Robots
FIRST Tech Challenge students learn to think like engineers. Teams of up to 15 students design, build and program robots to compete in a head-to-head challenge in an alliance format against other teams. Robots are built from a reusable platform, powered by Android technology, and can be coded using a variety of levels of Java-based programming. Teams raise funds, design and market their team brand and do community outreach to earn specific awards. Each season concludes with an exciting FIRST Championship.
What do I need to start a team?
FIRST Tech Challenge teams require specific kits and parts in order to participate, as well as team members/mentors, workspaces and materials. The registration guide below outlines the steps to registering an FTC team in Australia, as well as some associated costs in establishing your FTC team.
Steps to starting a team
Registration for the FIRST Tech Challenge in Australia must be done at two sites: the FIRST FTC Portal to register the team number, name and mentors, and the FIRST Australia dashboard to register the team for the season.
There are four key steps to registering a team:
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Register the team in the FIRST FTC Portal
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Purchase one set of equipment per team via the FTC Portal
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Register for the season on the FIRST Australia dashboard
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Select events for the season on the FIRST Australia dashboard
Support
There are many ways to get support throughout the season! Start with the following:
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FTC Australia Slack Workspace: This is a forum specifically for Australian FTC teams.
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Chief Delphi: An international forum for all things FTC.
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Other teams: Often the most powerful support can come directly from connections with other teams- feel free to approach veteran teams with questions or requests for help.
