FIRST Awards

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This page is dedicated to the awards that can be won during the FIRST Season, beginning with the most prestigious award, the Chairman's Award. Alternatively, you can read the official FIRST pdf.

Please Note: Most of the following information has been taken verbatim from the official FIRST awards text (PDF linked above). The copyright for this material belongs to USFIRST and it given here only as a resource. The FIRST website is www.usfirst.org

Chairman's

The Chairman's award is FIRST's most prestigious award. It is the award given to the team that most represents the ideals of FIRST. As such, it is the job of every team to spread the ideas of engineering and robotics throughout their community. The significance of this award is such that we have an entire team dedicated to earning this award.

The Chairmans Team has the job of coming up with new and exciting ways to spread our team's name throughout our community and FIRST's community through community service, raising interest in engineering, and spirit. To even be considered for the award, however, the team must create a 5 minute presentation to give to a panel of judges. Last year we received a second place of-sort through a judges' award. We can only assume it was very close between our team's presentation and the winning team's. Perhaps next year our team can win Chairman's at the regional level, giving us the ability to enter at the national level. Any team that wins Chairman's Award at Nationals is put into FIRST's Hall of Fame, and thus remembered for all time.

Engineering Inspiration

This award celebrates a team’s outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering and engineers, both within their school as well as their community. Criteria include: the extent and inventiveness of the team’s efforts to recruit students to engineering, the extent and effectiveness of the team’s community outreach efforts, and the measurable success of those efforts. This is the second highest team award FIRST bestows.

Woodie Flowers Finalist Award

Small Parts, Inc. presents the Woodie Flowers Award to an outstanding engineer or teacher participating in each of the robotics Regional Competitions. Students choose and write about a person on their team who best demonstrates excellence in teaching science, math, and creative design. These Regional winners will receive consideration for the Championship Woodie Flowers Award.

AdamBots mentor Warren Hildebrandt won the Woodie Flowers award at the 2006 Davis-Sacramento Regional. Congratulations H!

Competition Victories

These awards range in scale from National Champion to Finalist at a Regional. Of all the award categories, this is the one at which our team excels. In last year's FIRST Season alone, we won 2 regionals, placed finalist in a third, and were semifinalists in the National Tournament, after being undefeated in our division. Although these awards are not the 'highest' awards FIRST has to offer, they sure feel the best to win! The ones we've one are:

2005
- Archimedes Division Winner
- Regional Finalist: West Michigan Regional
- Regional Winner: Detroit Regional
- Regional Winner: Davis-Sacramento Regional
2003
- Regional Winner: West Michigan Regional
- Regional Winner: Midwest Regional

Judges'

During the course of the competition, the judging panel may encounter a team whose unique efforts, performance, or dynamics merit recognition.

Autodesk Inventor Award

Presented by Autodesk, Inc., this award recognizes the team that best understands, communicates, and documents the distinct phases of the design process from concept to completion. Autodesk will reward excellence in documenting the design process, technical competence using Autodesk software, and web page design.

Autodesk Visualization Award

Presented by Autodesk, Inc., this award recognizes excellence in student animation that clearly and creatively illustrates the spirit of the FIRST Robotics Competition. Autodesk will award excellence in content, creativity, and mastery of multimedia.

DaimlerChrysler - Team Spirit

This award celebrates extraordinary enthusiasm and spirit through exceptional partnership and teamwork.

Delphi - "Driving Tomorrow's Technology"

This award celebrates an elegant and advantageous machine feature. This award recognizes any aspect of engineering elegance including, but not limited to: design, wiring methods, material selection, programming techniques, and unique machine attributes. The criteria for this award are based on the team’s ability to concisely describe verbally, as well as demonstrate, this chosen machine feature.

General Motors - Industrial Design

This award celebrates form and function in an efficiently designed machine that effectively achieves the game challenge.

Highest Rookie Seed

This award celebrates the highest-seeded rookie team at the conclusion of the qualifying rounds.

Imagery

This award celebrates attractiveness in engineering and outstanding visual aesthetic integration from the machine to team appearance.

Johnson & Johnson - Sportsmanship

This award celebrates outstanding sportsmanship and continuous gracious professionalism in the heat of competition, both on and off the playing field.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers - Entrepreneurship

This award celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit. This award recognizes a team, which since its inception has developed the framework for a comprehensive business plan in order to scope, manage, and obtain team objectives. This team displays entrepreneurial enthusiasm and the vital business skills for a self-sustaining program.

Motorola - Quality

This award celebrates machine robustness in concept and fabrication.

RadioShack® Innovation in Control

This award celebrates an innovative control system or application of control components to provide unique machine functions.

Rookie All-Star

This award celebrates the rookie team exemplifying a young but strong partnership effort, as well as implementing the mission of FIRST to inspire students to learn more about science and technology. NOTE: FIRST encourages, but does not require, rookie teams to enter a Chairman’s Award submission relative to this award.

Rookie Inspiration

This award celebrates a rookie team’s outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering and engineers both within their school, as well as in their community. It is the 2nd highest honor FIRST bestows to a rookie team.

Industrial Safety Award

This award celebrates the team that progresses beyond safety fundamentals by using innovative ways to eliminate or protect against hazards. The winning team consistently demonstrates excellence in industrial safety performance that shines throughout the competition from uncrating to re-pack.

Website Award

This award recognizes excellence in student-designed, built, and managed FIRST team websites.

Xerox - Creativity

This award celebrates creative design, use of a component, or a creative or unique strategy of play.