The FIRST Robotics Competition is the world's largest high school robotics competition, founded in 1989 by inventor Dean Kamen. Each January a new game challenge is unveiled and teams of students aged 14 to 18 have six weeks to design, build, and program a robot capable of playing it. The championship is held annually in Houston, Texas across eight division fields, with the top alliances advancing to the Einstein Championship Field for the title. Teams compete in three-team alliances in head-to-head matches performing game-specific tasks such as scoring game pieces, climbing structures, and autonomous navigation sequences. The competition produces a strong pipeline into engineering careers: FIRST alumni are disproportionately represented at robotics companies, NASA, and leading engineering schools. Teams like 254 (the Cheesy Poofs), 1678 (Citrus Circuits), and 2910 (Jack in the Bot) have become competitive dynasties with multiple championship appearances.