​FIRST is a national organization whose mission is to spur interest in science and technology among high school students through robotics. There are thousands of FIRST teams throughout the world; each team is assigned a number; ​Atholton's team, the Space RAIDers is team number 2537. Each year, FIRST releases a new challenge and FIRST teams have 6 weeks to build a robot to meet that challenge. Once the robots are built, they are entered into competitions (Local, Regional, and National) where they compete to see which robots best met the challenge.

FIRST Competitions Local competitions are held in high-school gymnasiums; Regional competitions are held in university stadiums and are very large. Competitions are structured as many qualifying matches where teams compete for points; the teams with the most points proceed to quarter, semi, and final matches until a winner is declared. Each match consists of 6 teams split into two "alliances" (red and blue) with each alliance consisting of 3 teams. The red and blue sides compete for points according to the specific rules of the competition. Each match consists of two phases: "autonomous" where the robot operates completely under software control with no human intervention and "teleop" where the robot is controlled by a human driver using wireless communications (like a remote-control car). During qualification matches, teams are assigned, but during quarter, semi-final, and final matches, alliances are formed by the competing teams and strategy and negotiation for forming become very important.

FIRST Season The AHS team meets from the Fall through Spring.

• Pre-Season: Fall meetings are typically once-per-week and are referred to as the "pre-season"; during this time, students train (prepare) for the competition: new students are taught fundamental skills; for example, new Control Systems students are introduced to Java, sensors, and the robot environment; returning students set up the IT environment, team structure, and execute technical challenges.
• Build-Season: In early January, FIRST announces the details of the competition for this year in "the reveal" aka Kick-off. After kick-off, teams have 6 weeks to build their competition robot after which they must stop work and "bag" it (bagging literally means placing the robot in a giant plastic bag and sealing the bag). At the kick-off, a video and several .pdf handbooks are released with details of the game and a very large set of rules. The students and mentors spend a day studying the competition and rules and then break into groups to brainstorm potential robot solutions. The students present their ideas to each other and then select the best ideas from each group for their robot design. During 6-week build-season, the team meets very frequently; typically 3-times after school during the week and both weekend days. The team splits into groups that work on different aspects of the robot such as the drive-train, targeting systems, manipulators, etc.. By the end of the build season, the competition robot has been built, programmed, and test driven extensively. NOTE: you should expect and plan for at least a week of the school being closed due to snow - students (especially those working on software and sensors) should be prepared to work from home during these closures.
• Extended-Build-Season: Once the robot has been bagged, students may (and should) continue to develop robot features and capabilities. This is typically done using a second robot that had been built during the build season for this purpose or using other development tools. During this time, students can refine software, perform additional testing, and even make small mechanical elements (e.g. constructing or altering parts) that they can later place on the robot when it is un-bagged for competition (there is a weight limit on what can be added to the robot so you can't just keep working and bring a whole new robot, but you might be able to replace a mechanism or part of a mechanism); software and sensor changes are virtually unlimited. Extended build-season may be many weeks and encompasses all of the time between bag and the last competition.
• Post-Season: after the last competition, the team meets infrequently, usually to clean up and organize for the following year. Mentors meet to select student leaders for the following year and awards for students that have performed exceptionally well including Nuttys for exceptional individual performance, Boltys for exceptional team performance, and Structural Support Awards (SSAs) to recognize performance that was good, but did not meet the level of a Nutty or Bolty.

Team Structure The team has several "captains" with specific team-wide duties:

• Team Captain - responsible for the overall team morale, planning, and cooperation
• Strategy Captain - becomes expert on rules and develops the strategies the team will use during competition and to form alliances
• Integration Captain - responsible for ensuring the work done by various sub-teams (see below) integrates successfully into a final robot. Often manages the schedule during build season.
• Game Captain - coordinates the actions at a competition including driving, scouting, alliance formation, etc.

There are several other "captains" and it's not clear to me what the difference is between a Captain and a sub-team Lead...they might be the same.

• Operations captain - subteam lead for the operations sub-team (see below)
• Hardware captain - ?
• Software Captain - subteam lead for the control systems sub-team (see below)

The team is then split into sub-teams, each with one or two leads and each focusing on specific areas including:

• Operations - business/fund-raising (the team raises tens of thousands of dollars annually through sponsors), community outreach, marketing, video and document production, etc.
• Mechanical - design and build the mechanical aspects of the robot: its frame, drive-train, and manipulating mechanisms. This team is often further broken down into mechanism-specific teams where each is responsible for a specific mechanism such as specific manipulators or the drive-base.
• Electrical - design and build the electrical/electronic aspects of the robot: its computers, batteries, power distribution, motor controllers, etc.
• Control Systems - design and write the software that controls the robot and the sensing systems (sonar/lidar/switches/accelerometers/etc.) that let the robot sense its environment
• Field and Pit - construct replicas of the competition environment for training/practice during the build season and manage the "pit" where the robot is maintained and repaired during competitions (like the pit crew for a race car).
• Drive - the students who control (drive) the robot during competition and interact with other teams to form competition alliances