NAC Team 93's System

[NullEntity]

Hello, I am Bryce of N.E.W. Apple Corps Robotics (N.A.C. Team 93).

Last year (my freshman year), our scouting team consisted of two people and no base whatsoever. Essentially, we started from scratch. By the end of build, we ended up with a web-based system. It worked beautifully. Sadly, our laptops did work as well.

This year, we started out with 3 new members. Within a week, we were back to the same two. Due to out previous experiences, we decided to go with a paper-based system. What a minute.. How do we get paper data into our beautiful statistics system from last year? I am proud to tell you, we have solved that problem!

Our current system:

Bubble recognition (recognizes filled in bubbles)
ADF (Automated Document Feeder) Scanner (scans 20 pages per minute)
Easily configured using a configuration file
Configurable identifier marks (makes sure your form is the same version as the configuration file)
Aligns to a reference image (straightens it)
Outputs to an XML file that can be uploaded to another system
Configures every bubble
And more!


These are the features we have at the current moment and might be expanded at any time! The point is, the scouters record the data on the forms, you put the forms in the scanner and walk away! It's a brilliantly simple system that has applications other than scouting.

Probably the best news about it is that it can be reused year after year.


So, what does Chief Delphi think?


P.S. Feature requests will be greatly appreciated!

[keehun]

WOW! If you turned this in to a business, you'd actually do pretty well with some enhancements. I feel like this is the "scantrons" we have at school and standardize testing centers. Fill in bubbles and automated grading!

It's sad Team 2502 can't see you in Minnesota this year!.. I hope that we'll see you guys in Atlanta to check out this system! (Ah, how wonderful dreams can be). :)

Thanks,
Keehun Nam

[NullEntity]

We coded this in C++. It was really funny, to generate some unique identifiers for images, we had to include a Windows library and CLR. Today I replaced that with a Boost library. It went from about a 2 minute running time to about a 2 second running time. I hope to see you in Atlanta! (Personally, I was mad that we couldn't go to Minnesota. Last year was awesome!)

Here's out match scouting form:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2744683/Form2.png

[NullEntity]

And yes, it is a bit like Scantrons, minus the standardized forms. You can have whatever you want because it scans where it's told too. If you look at our form, it's really easy to scan in!

[EthanMiller]

Any chance of getting this software?

[keehun]

You guys should publish a whitepaper for it. It'd be hugely successful and popular. Maybe you should commericalize or open-source it. It'll be exciting.

[NullEntity]

Any chance of getting this software?

It'd probably be next year if we release it at all.