FIRST

Robot organization/contest founded by Dean Kamen in 1989.

http://www.usfirst.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRST

As of 2006, over 1,125 high school teams of 28,000 students from Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom, and more compete to build 100-125 pound robots that can complete a task that changes every year. Teams are given a standard set of parts and the game details at the beginning of January and are given six weeks to construct a competitive robot that can accomplish the game's task.

their "little league" FirstLegoLeague uses Lego Mind Storms http://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/fll

• Joel West got involved.

the FIRST Vex Challenge (started in 2005). It is designed for high school students who don't have the financial, temporal, or other resources for the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) VexKit