Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

This thread got me thinking about what were the actual best pitscouting questions to ask in aerial assist to get the most useful information. We are competing for the first time in week 4 so we are still finalizing the details of our scouting setup. Here is our current pitscouting sheet

If your team has already competed this year or even if they haven't and you have some good questions or you've heard some good questions please post them here.

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

you would want to make sure that the team can work as a whole and with other robots well, so robot compatibility and ability to transfer the ball smoothly and quickly is a must!

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

One of the best questions this year due to teams playing HARD defense is, What kind of drive train do you have? I chose this because while watching elimination matches in the first 2 weeks, teams who had the pushing power to get out from pins and push defenders out of the way to score usually score more points. Yes, you could prove me wrong in some matches, but in my opinion this is one of the best questions to ask.

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

"Teleported Period"

;)

Drivetrain type is indeed important this year.

I still haven't figured out how scouting will work this year...and I got to do a little bit of it last weekend

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

"What does your robot do the best"

I would follow that with

"Are you being honest" or "Are you sure"

I was looking for answers related to what role they would be playing during teleop -passing quickly-inbounding consistently-shooting either goals consistently-able to truss-strong defence etc.

It helps to ask if their being honest. Lots of times team members would rethink their answer and give me a new one. Teams aren't lying to sabotage your alliance, they just don't want to admit something isn't working properly for some reason of their own. Also, depending who you talk to from a single team, you may get a different answer.

When your preparing strategy for qualifying matches its always good to know what teams do best since the defined roles on an alliance can decide if you win or lose the match.

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

The best pit scouting question you can ask is

"Can I take a picture of your robot?"

All other questions, if not an obvious answer(like drive train), will get embellished(what they designed it to do not what it actually does). So there is no need to waste your scouters and each teams time with questions that probably aren't 100% accurate. Get your answers by what they do on the field.

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

I agree with this 100% I don't really understand how asking questions about one's robot helps your team, it would be better to just base it off of what you see on the field

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

Pit scouting is more useful than you think. Asking questions is a great way to get answers to things you don't see on the field. Example if you have scouters in the stands, perhaps some can not tell the difference in drive trains. Or two speed transmissions. What if a team had a two or three ball autonomous and never had a chance to show it off in game play? What if a team had a complete second or third replacement mechanism? You wouldn't see that from the field. Granted a lot of teams are going to tell you how great they are but this is the important thing to know. The true answers are not always what someone says, sometimes its what they don't say that is the answer. Pit scouting is another tool to help your team or alliance partners be the the best they can be when the time comes. If you don't do it can you honestly say you have done the best you can do?

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

If they didn't show it(succesfully) on the field of play then they don't have it. I'm not going to pick a team for elims on the hope that they can do something they said they could do but never actually showed.

As far as drive train a good picture will show you everything you need to know for pit scouting, match scouting will get the rest. What they have for replacement parts and what not is not my concern when it comes to their robots performance.

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

Generally, I think the best pit scouting strategy (that is, something that should be done every year regardless of the game) is all the drivetrain details and a picture, as well as overall ratings (assuming your pit scout is a knowledgeable person about your team's robot and strategy/robots in general). We also generally note what type of shooter/intake a team has.

This year on 125, we used the notetaking app Springpad* in order to supplement our scouting. I can't imagine how our scouting would have gone without it. We have a 'note' for each team we see throughout our district events, each tagged with the events they are attending (not just the ones we see them at-we got a bunch of pictures from Granite State last weekend).

Did it help? Boy, it did. During our Saturday night scouting meeting, it was great to just quickly pull up a picture/info on everyone's computers/phone. Even better was when discussing our second pick with our alliance partner, we were able to quickly pull up a picture of a robot when they asked, 'which one is that again?'.

I hate relying on anything more than pen, paper, and an excel spreadsheet for scouting, but this really has me considering changing my mind. **

*We used Springpad over the much more popular Evernote due to the fact that it has an unlimited upload rate. We very quickly ran into Evernote's 60 mb upload limit after <20 pictures at Granite State

**Of course, for Pine Tree/NE Champs, I very likely will probably end up printing a 'journal'/book of all the pictures we have; I'm an FRC Scouting luddite :D

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

Wow, can't believe I missed that typo, but I kinda want to keep it now.

The square at the top left is for a Polaroid photo of the robot to be stapled on.
I feel like there is use to getting some physical information about robots and team's approaches especially during the first couple of matches at the regional level when match scouting doesn't give you much.

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

OK, I just have to ask a question. I see "Number of Wheels" on the vast majority of scouting sheets, and it gets asked constantly in the pits, but does it really matter? I can understand what type drivetrain you have, or what speed you are geared for making a difference in a scouting discussion; but do teams actually base their rankings on how many wheels our robot has?

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

Sending students around to talk with students from each of the other teams is a good thing. The data they collect should be taken with a grain of salt.

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

The ability to repair a robot should be a concern. Can you see that from the field? Also think about it like this not knowing as much as you can about an opponent or an alliance partner is picking them on the hope that they can do something. Knowledge is power. If you don't pit scout you don't know every thing there is to know about a team.

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

Best quote of the entire thread.

All pit scouting really helps with is looking at build quality and seeing what types of repairs they are making.

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

I also think that is a big benefit of pit scouting. Getting a large portion of our members that will spend most of the event scouting instead of in our pit to talk to other teams and learn about their bots is a huge bonus.

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

We don’t ask for "number of wheels", but at the request of one of our Mentors we will start to ask "How many batteries do you have?" :)

As many know, if your team is fortunate to go deep into Eliminations, with several best 2 of 3 matches, knowing if the Alliance can keep up with fresh batteries is relatively important.

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

Hand them a picture of the field they can draw on. Ask them to draw their autonomous routine(s). Include any precisely known dimensions if they have them (ex: we line up x feet from this wall).

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

Objective ones. Asking questions like "how good are you at playing defense?" and "what is your shooting accuracy?" tells you just about nothing.

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

You also learn about their attitudes and work ethic.

Last year, we were in St. Louis so my son's team could compete in the FLL World Festival. In the evening, after the FLL activities were over for the day, we would visit the FRC pits, often after the matches were finished for the day. Most of the pits were empty with only a lonely robot. We noticed afterward that the teams that were still working those evenings were well represented in the Division finals and on Einstein. Teams like 1114, 610 and our friends at 1477 (thanks again for the ride) were repairing and improving their robot every time we visited. The 118 team members didn't have much repair work to do but were not leaving anything to chance, constantly checking for things like tire wear, loose screws and loose electrical connections.

You also get to see how the team members work with each other. If they are arguing amongst themselves in the pits, how likely are you to be able to negotiate an alliance strategy with them?

It sounds odd, but I always ask questions that I already know the answer to, or think I do.

How accurate is your shooter?... For example.

Most every team will tell you 90% or higher. Most will actually believe it too. Very few are actually telling the truth when they say that.

It's always refreshing when you hear a team tell you a percentage that's spot on with what your scouting says, even though it sounds very low compared to everyone else.

The irony is, a team like that will probably have one of the best shooting percentages at the competition!

I always like to ask "what's your favourite part of the robot"

The answer I usually get is vaguely about how awesome a shooter or intake or catcher is. There's often a lot of hand waving and adjectives.

But I love hearing from students about a seemingly innocuous, but "critical detail," like a chain tensioner that required a weird setup on the mill, or the geometry iterations behind a catapult hard stop that stopped it from self destructing when dry fired. Or maybe it was a series of equations in programming to make the driver controls smoother to control. An oddly shaped bracket that magically cleared enough room for the shooter to fire without having to deploy the intake. Maybe it's just a series of clearance /access holes that allow the pit crew to replace an entire gearbox without disassembling the whole side of the drivetrain.

I guess my questioning usually revolves around how well a team understands their own robot, its limitations, and whether they have realistic expectations of it.

I don't really much care if the robot is "good" or "bad". Our match scouting data can figure that out. But a "bad" robot in the hands of a "good" team can help you win a lot of banners. That's what you're really looking for when pit scouting.

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

I think that's a fantastic way to look at it. I've never thought of it that way before, but I really like that.

Personally, one valuable kind of pit scouting I think most teams forget about is pit scouting once matches have already begun. Since we have a separate sheet per team at an event, it makes it really easy to spot sudden deviations from a team's usual performance. Pit scouting that team can be a great way to figure out what's going on.

For example, if a team's data shows that they are very consistently scoring 4 high goals during teleoperated, and suddenly their robot barely moves during a match, it's important to know why. Was it a communications issue? Are there some electrical gremlins they need to work out? Send a pit scout to ask. Record the answer. Then send them again later to see if they've solved the problem (if not, ask what they need and offer a hand). I'd be much more comfortable picking a team who didn't move one match because their radio came unplugged than a team that fried a cRIO, but these can look the same from the stands.

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

Your scouts should already know this.
And it's not a definite thing that the people in the pit will know the correct answer to this question depending on the team's division of labor.

Are practicing to be a judge?
That's the question they always ask.

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

We really don't ask too many questions, we judge ourselves. Like drivetrain, for example. We can tell what kind of wheels they have, how many are powered (most of the time) just by looking. We still do ask questions on how things work.


Then we judge for ourselves: How well could they assist, how well are their bumpers made, are they a 1st or 2nd pick, and so on.

We also ask: What grade is your driveteam on? How much experience do they have?

This matters especially this year where you need practice catching the ball and passing. I like to see that the drivers have been through 2012 when we had to balance.

Re: Actually the best pit scouting questions
 

I would like to take everyone who is reading this and remind them one thing.
A really nice icebreaker when talking to other teams is something like...
"Do you guys have a minute?"
I remember so many times I forgot to scout a team cause they just caught me at a bad time.