What rookie FRC teams actually get in the Kit of Parts: the totes, drive base, KitBot, control system, and the Virtual Kit of software and vouchers.
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If you just registered a rookie FIRST Robotics Competition team, the "Kit of Parts" is one of the first things you will hear about, and one of the most misunderstood. Here is what it actually is, what rookies get that veterans do not, and what it does and does not cover.
The Kit of Parts (KOP) is the bundle of physical parts, a drive base, and digital resources that FIRST and its suppliers provide to registered teams each season. It is not a complete robot in a box. Think of it as a strong starting point: enough core hardware to build a basic driving robot, plus a pile of software licenses and vendor vouchers to fill in the rest.
The KOP comes in a few pieces. There is a season-specific box with game-related items that every team gets, one or more totes of mechanical and electrical components, a drive base chassis kit, and the Virtual Kit, which is the catalog of software and vouchers. You unlock the Virtual Kit at Kickoff, the event in early January where the new game is revealed.
This is the part that confuses new teams. Rookies and veterans do not receive the same physical kit.
So the rookie kit is deliberately heavier and more complete. FIRST front-loads the expensive, foundational parts to teams in their first year. If you are still figuring out how all of this fits together, our Getting Started guide walks through the first-season basics.
The single most valuable thing in a rookie kit is a legal, working control system, the electronics that make the robot move. The core pieces are:
These are exactly the parts the game manual requires, so building from the kit keeps you legal without having to research every rule on day one.
The Drive Base Kit is the AM14U6 chassis, a rolling frame that a small group can assemble in about six hours or less, per FIRST's build guide. On top of that, FIRST releases a KitBot each season: a free set of instructions and a parts list for a simple, competitive robot built around that chassis. Many strong rookie teams build the KitBot in year one rather than designing something custom, because it reliably scores and gives you a working robot to practice driving. There is no shame in it, and it is genuinely good advice.
A huge share of the kit's value is digital. The Virtual Kit includes free professional CAD software (options have included Autodesk Fusion, Onshape, SOLIDWORKS, and Mastercam), engineering tools like MATLAB, and a stack of vouchers and credits toward parts and manufacturing services such as laser cutting. The exact lineup changes every season, so always check the current Virtual Kit catalog at Kickoff rather than assuming last year's list.
One thing that is always free and never in a voucher: WPILib, the official open-source software you use to program the robot. Anyone can download it, no kit required.
The Kit of Parts will not, by itself, win you a regional. It gives you a drivetrain and electronics; the mechanisms that actually play the game, intakes, arms, shooters, and the like, are up to you to design, buy, or fabricate. Treat the kit as your foundation, not your finished robot, and plan a budget for the parts you will add on top.
New to all of this? Start with our Getting Started guide for a step-by-step path from unboxing the kit to a robot that drives.
This article is AI-assisted: drafted from primary sources, then reviewed and edited by hand. Errors still get through. When one is reported we fix it and write down what changed — publicly, in the corrections log.
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