About FIRST Robotics Competition
The first program developed through FIRST was the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), which is designed to inspire high school students about career opportunities by giving them real world experiences working with professionals. Each year FRC introduces a new game as a challenge for the students and mentors to develop strategies and a robot for playing the game. There is much more to FRC than building a robot and playing a game.
Details of the game are released at the beginning of January, and the teams are given six weeks to construct a competitive robot that can accomplish the game's tasks. The robots weigh around 120 pounds (depending on the current year's rules). The teams are limited to a set budget each year that they have to maintain. The purpose of this rule is to prevent well-funded teams from outspending "funding-challenged" teams. The competition challenge changes each year, and the teams cannot reuse components created for previous robots.
Information from FIRST website