The Effects of COVID-19 on FIRST Robotics

The 2020 FIRST Robotics Competition season has been a new experience for everyone involved. As a recent alumni of a FIRST Robotics team, I am thankful that I have not had to face the reality of building a robot and possibly never seeing it play a match. As a former driver, I understand the advantages that come from having additional field experience, and it is an unfortunate reality that we now have many teams on an uneven playing field. I have compiled all event data for the Infinite Recharge season and hope to highlight some points that I found interesting that are hopefully useful and informative as well. In this article I hope to illustrate exactly how much damage has been dealt, and which teams have an advantage going into off-season events (or possibly postponed FIRST sponsored events).

The figure above shows a 67.88% suspension rate for FRC events in the 2020 Season. There were 193 events scheduled for Infinite Recharge, sadly due to complications from COVID-19 only 62 events were conducted during weeks 1 and 2 of competition. These numbers may not be shocking considering how early into the season FIRST chose to suspend all events, but the data regarding the affected teams is much more interesting. Since the suspension of all events on March 12, many teams have been left in limbo regarding whether or not their robot will ever touch the gray carpet. It is unfortunate that this is our situation, because the results of many teams' hard work was ultimately (and unknowingly) hinged upon the decision to compete before or after week 2.

There are 3,912 teams registered to compete in Infinite Recharge. As the figure above shows, 1,847 teams were scheduled to attend an event at some point, but did not attend within the first two weeks of competition. This is a staggering 47% of teams that have yet to play a single match of Infinite Recharge. The difference between having one or two events worth of experience versus not playing at all is a stark one, so it is important to know what we're up against in the coming months. What we can do now is take a look at the data and assess our situation from afar to gain some insight on the regions most affected. Below is an input field that will generate a chart similar to the figure above displaying the statistics for the state / province entered. For example, entering 'Indiana' will display a figure of how many teams have and have not attended an event in the state of Indiana. The search is not limited to the United States, any state or province where there is at least one FRC team will provide data (e.g. 'Istanbul', or 'Québec').

Enter a state / province below to view participation statistics

If you have tried searching for a state or province, you may have noticed that there are FRC teams in parts of the world that you've never heard of before. This is one of the great things about FIRST, unfortunately in this season it is not great for the teams themselves. Examining the data, we can see that remote areas relative to events (e.g. regions in Asia and Latin America, or in remote areas of the United States such Idaho or Wyoming) have much lower attendance rates than teams who are closer in proximity to FIRST events. There are many factors that can contribute to a lack of attendance (distance, funding, etc.), but I believe that most of this can be attributed to bad luck combined with how many events teams planned on travelling to in the first place. In general, we see participation rates of either 0% or 100% in these areas (e.g. Morelos (2 teams, 100%), and Shanghai (15 teams, 0%)). The issue of scheduling at the right time is a big one, accounting for most of the disparity in participation across the board. Those who decided to plan their travels for early in the season got to experience the game, but the unlucky few who scheduled later did not. Let's further examine the teams that have participated by taking a look at the teams that have attended more than one event.

As you can see from the data, there are very few teams that have attended greater than one event within this 3 week timeline (including week 0). 100 teams out of 2065 teams have attended more than one event, this is just 4.8% of teams that have played, or 2.6% of all teams. I should clarify the phrase 'greater than one' because the maximum number of events attended out of all teams is two. It is important to distinguish whether either of these two events are week zero events, since week zero events tend to be shorter or otherwise not equivalent to other events. Out of the teams that have attended events, 44 attended one of the three week zero events, and 21 of those teams attended more than one event. In summary, out of all teams that have attended more than one event (two events), 21% of them attended a week zero event and 79% did not. That leaves us with 2% of all teams that have played two events, 53% of teams that have played at least one event, and 47% of teams that haven't played at all. So where does this leave us? Well, we're still not any closer to playing, but I hope that this data helps you in taking your next steps if you're part of those who haven't played. And if nothing else, I hope you learned something. Stay safe, wash your hands, and most importantly keep building robots.

Written by Aidan Walz, Team 5484 alumni - 2020