The 2023 Season

Season Structure

The Challenge season is divided into 3 rounds of competitive play: Qualifiers, Playoffs, and Finals. The team that makes it all the way to and wins the Finals is the Season Champion.

Round Structure

Each round of the Challenge consists of one game board. Game boards are objective-based scenarios (AKA puzzle spaces) in RoboCo. Each board is comprised of 1 main objective, 2 sub-objectives, and 5 “secret” objectives.

All three game boards will be released to participants at the start of the Challenge, but we recommend to focus on the game board for the current round. Participants must work to score as many points as possible by building a robot, completing objectives, and submitting videos of their best runs.

To complete each round, FIRST Global and Filament Games stream a video broadcast of all participants’ Challenge runs, complete with announcer commentary and scoring for every team.

Noteworthy Changes from the 2021 Season

Among various game improvements, RoboCo now includes sensors and Python programming. You are welcome but not required to use these to aid your Challenge runs.

For brisk and exciting viewing, participants' Challenge runs during the Qualifiers and Playoffs will be broadcast in groups of up to 4 using a split-screen presentation. Group placement has no effect on scoring.

Scoring has also been streamlined for the 2023 season.

Scoring

For each round, players should complete as many objectives as possible on the game board within a 2 minute 30 second time limit. Continue playing the game until the time limit has elapsed -- it is not necessary to proceed to RoboCo's in-game results screen.

Each completed objective (main, sub, or secret) is worth 3,000 points. Partial completion of an objective (e.g. collecting 40/50 pieces of dust) does not count.

Each penalty for property damage or an unhappy human subtracts 1,500 points.

Players can also earn up to 10,000 points for cost efficiency, with the cost of their robot subtracted from that total. EX: A player that creates a $3,200 robot will receive 6,800 points of the cost bonus points.

Round Results

At the end of each round, FIRST Global and Filament Games steams a video broadcast of all participants’ Challenge runs on YouTube and Twitch.

The top 24 scores from the Qualifiers advance to the Playoffs. The top 8 scores from the Playoffs advance to the Finals. The top score from the Finals is declared FIRST Global RoboCo Challenge Champion.

Judges' Awards

After the final round, all teams' robots from all rounds are eligible for the following special Judges' Awards:

• Most Aesthetic
• Most Creative
• Elegantly Engineered

Bronze, Silver, and Gold will be awarded in each category.