The FIRST Vex Challenge is a mid-level robotics competition announced by FIRST on March 22, 2005. Its first competition was a demonstration competition at the national FIRST competition in Atlanta, GA from April 21-22, 2005.
While most FRC teams are school established in the form of clubs which require fundraiser's to support a multi-thousand dollar price tag, Vex is more public and designed for people that do not wish to join such an expensive and generally school-oriented FRC team. Vex can be built by anyone, and the kit of parts is available at Radio Shack stores for $300 US. Vex Challenge robots are approximately one-third the scale of their FRC counterparts. The Vex robots offer greater control over robot design than FLL through the use of Erector Set style pieces. The Erector set style pieces provide less flexibility than FRC, but provide a transition for students from the FLL competition to the FRC competition.
The VEX Demonstration at the 2005 National Competition featured a 1/3 linear scale mock-up of the 2004 FRC Competition, FIRST Frenzy: Raising the Bar.