FIRST high-schoolers will get new tools for competitions

The FIRST program seems to be headed to a new level, as participants in the high-school grades will get the opportunity to work with an advanced, sophisticated controller that was designed just for them. The new controller promises to raise the level of student competitions by allowing more flexibility in design, while putting that capability in a smaller package than was previously available to them. 

This plan for this advancement first came to light last April, when the FIRST organization (www.usfirst.org) and instrumentation hardware/software supplier National Instruments (www.ni.com) announced that they were extending their technology partnership through 2019. At the time, they noted that their extended relationship would center around the creation of a next-generation platform for embedded robotics control, which they code-named “Athena.” 

The technical details of Athena were unveiled by National Instruments and FIRST at the NI Week show in Austin, TX, this past August. Officially named NI roboRIO, the controller is both rugged and reconfigurable, as befits a device that will likely see hard use for numerous projects. Paired with LabVIEW system design software, it will let FIRST teams design real systems faster than ever. High-school students will use roboRIO in FIRST Robotics Competitions starting in 2015, giving them experience with what are basically the same tools they will encounter in college and their science/engineering careers. 

Despite being very similar to real-world technical systems, this next-generation controller is built specifically with student robotics competitions in mind. It has a smaller footprint and lighter weight than prior ones, measuring just 5.7 x 5.6 in. and weighing less than 12 oz – about the same as a large PB&J sandwich. More importantly, it features higher processor performance and a richer I/O set than previous FIRST controllers, and the innate ability to integrate with custom electronics.

The new controller is built around a Xilinx Zynq-7020 FPGA with an embedded dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor running at 667 MHz; built-in system RAM of 256 Mbyte and the same sized NAND storage. There's an 800-samples/s, 3-axis accelerometer on board as well, which would be needed for just about any robotic design. The operating system is Linux, with the real-time extensions needed for machine control, and supported languages include not only LabVIEW but C++ and Java too.  

Another thing that sets the controller apart, allowing FIRSTers to get really creative, is the number and types of I/O ports. Beginning on the analog side, there are eight 0-to-5-V input channels that in sum can take in 500 ksamples/s, which are digitized to 12 bits. Two 0-to-5-V analog output channels can deliver 340 ksamples/s simultaneously, with 12-bit resolution. Of the 26 digital I/O channels, 10 are dedicated, while are16 shared. There are also 20 separate channels for pulse-width modulated signals; 10 are dedicated while 10 can be shared. And there are four dual-input channels for relay control. 

The controller also supports numerous busses for communication with other electronic devices. There's two 1-MHz SPI master bus channels (one dedicated for up to 4 devices and one shared for a single device), two 400-kHz I²C channels (one dedicated and one shared), and a 1-Mbit/s CAN port. There are also two High-Speed 2.0 USB host ports and a HS2.0 USB device port. Traditional comm ports include an RS232 port, a TTL UART port, and 10/100-Mbit Ethernet. And topping it all off is a custom-electronics port that gives access to the shared ports for analog and digital I/O, PWM, I²C, SPI, TTL UART, and 3.3 and 5-V power. 

A donation from NI will let FIRST provide these next-generation robotics systems to participating teams in 2015. The donation provides hardware for all existing and “rookie” FRC teams over a five-year period, in addition to the LabVIEW software that NI currently provides to all FRC teams.