How to Scout Recycle Rush?
 

We are working on our scouting sheets right now on 694 and we haven't had any fantastic ideas on scouting in this game, particularly when it comes to scouting totes scored, level of stacks, and where the RC is placed. We haven't zeroed in on what we care about and what the simplest and most effective way of getting our data will be.
Our current best idea is to scout totes scored overall and what level each RC is placed on regardless of if they built the stack or not. So to indicate that an RC is scored you write the number of the level it is placed on.

Any ideas that other teams are using to get this scouted?

Re: How to Scout Recycle Rush?
 

Make a grid on your scouting sheet. Have scouts write in every tote or container scored, and at what level it was scored at. If the robot scores on top of existing structure, just leave the spots below blank. I think this is the simplest way to get "everything" without overwhelming people.

Re: How to Scout Recycle Rush?
 

My advice comes from my experience on a team with only two scouts, so it may not be super applicable.

A super rigidly structured scouting sheet isn't always the way to go.

Information like "Robot was an amazing stacker once they managed to get an RC in the robot" or "Robot has a tipping problem when carrying six stacks, but seems okay when carrying less weight", or "Robot isn't controllable and would knock over stacks if the field was more crowded" are really nice to have.

We also have an abilities section where each robot receives a score based on its ability to do things like cap a stack, do a two ball autonomous, pick up totes from landfill, etc.

A blank means that the scouts were unsure if the robot could perform the action or if the robot did not demonstrate the action.
0 means the team's robot cannot do it because it wasn't designed to.
1 means the team's robot is designed to do it, but is ineffective and has a zero or very low success rate.
2 means the team can do it, but is not particularly quick or reliable
3 means the team can do it well, but not perfectly
4 means the team can do it amazingly well and is one of the best at this.

Re: How to Scout Recycle Rush?
 

I feel that if you have the resources (i.e. manpower), this may not be the best way to go if you want to get the highest quality scouting data, since all of it is subjective. Student A may rate team 9000 higher than 9001 in a certain category while Student B is mistaken on the criteria and rates 9001 higher than 9000. Which one is right?

Objective scouting data is surprisingly informative and has fewer inconsistencies than subjective data. After all, it is hard to mess up counting the height of a stack that a team made, but it is pretty easy to mess up judging how stable a team's stack is, or how efficiently they made said stack. There is no need to rate efficiency subjectively if you just look at the # of totes stacked in a match, etc.

A good scouting system will use both objective and subjective data in order to get the "whole scoop" on a team, but objective data should be used to compare every single team in the same way (i.e. # of totes, # of stacks, landfill feeding vs. human feeding), while subjective data is used to detect anomalies (i.e. team "9000" can stack totes with one robot while a tethered robot carries the stack to score;) )

Sorry this got a bit long...

Re: How to Scout Recycle Rush?
 

I think your team could use some of the advice in this thread , and objective data is leaps and bounds more useful than subjective data.

Re: How to Scout Recycle Rush?
 

I don't want to get into the disaster that is scouting on our team, but trust me, pure objective data isn't what we want.

There is usually only one student who cares enough to go through the objective data (the drive coach), and he is mostly ignored. If we aren't going to do anything with the data, why bother? The subjective stuff can be helpful to the drive coach for planning match strategy, but the objective stuff is usually inaccurate when we have the same two students scouting all matches of the competition.

Our (terrible) strategy for when we seed in the top 8 is to pick our first team based on what the team's (or team next to us) general opinion for the best team is, then ask our first pick who to pick next.

Re: How to Scout Recycle Rush?
 

They say there's more than one way to skin a cat... it just seems you are content with the option where you skin it while it's alive.

Re: How to Scout Recycle Rush?
 

You could do a grid layout with one stack per column as mentioned above, you could denote where each stack was placed on the field with a map, you could just make a total count. The biggest question is not what data you CAN get, because that's almost limitless, but what data your team will value and need to make an informed decision come selection time.

Re: How to Scout Recycle Rush?
 

You want to pick bots that complement your bot! For example in this year if you have a feeder station bot, you want a bot that can work well in the "alley", if you have a 3 tote auto you want a bot that can do a 3 rc auto

Re: How to Scout Recycle Rush?
 

We're still making changes, but here's how we're scouting teleop:


The 1-6 is what level the [tote|RC|etc] was scored at. We like scantron-like scouting sheets, makes it much easier for our data entry guys. We also like shapes.

Re: How to Scout Recycle Rush?
 

Sounds like the first thing you should work on is not ignoring your drive coach. I mean this with the utmost sincerity, since the drive coach is one of the most important people on your team. Help the drive team be more prepared (they will know what information they want), and this will pay off much more than spending all of your scouting efforts getting subjective views on the robots.

I know it's hard with only two people, but this is my best advice.

Re: How to Scout Recycle Rush?
 

I just thought those two were worth repeating.

This is the real reason I posted - I like the general format of this form, but have a few suggestions:

I presume you'll have six of these sheets for each match?

I like the gray totes and RC areas for tele-op; other than adding a few more in case of powerhouse teams, I don't see what to add..

However, for the litter, level does not matter, and this does not take into account either HP littering of the other side of the field, nor "processing" litter (this last is likely to be minimal anyway). There will also probably be cases where one team gets the litter in the RC and another team stacks it who gets this credit?

It looks like autonomous and coopertition need a bit of work:

• For yellow totes, why 4 and 2? It would seem to me that 3 for autonomous and 3 (or possibly 4, of which 3 could be checked) for coopertition would make more sense.
• There is no mention of how many RCs were moved to autozone during autonomous, nor whether the robot moved itself.
• This also does not address robots that can pull RCs off the step.

Also, there should probably be a "clumsiness" spot to indicate stacks that were knocked over by the robot (especially if it did not score them in the first place).

Re: How to Scout Recycle Rush?
 

We do single sheet for a team over the whole event. Got six of these match blocks on each side.

We're competing week 1, so the amounts of each are for this week. I'm sure we'll have to add more for MSC.

As I mentioned in my above post, this is teleop; we have a separate block (right next to this one) for autonomous. I omitted it just because it takes a minute of explanation, and wasn't relevant to the discussion above. So "yellow totes" here is coop (could probably add a third level one pentagon, that may be necessary).

I agree with you that litter doesn't need to be done by level, it just worked out better to package it this way. Still thinking about changing it. Stacks knocked over was already on our to-do list as well. Thanks for the input!

Re: How to Scout Recycle Rush?
 

From a qualitative data stand point, I would pay attention to how well your team and the teams you are scouting work can together. If your robot only picks up bins/containers right side up, while another team knocks them over in autonomous, write that down. Additionally, note any interesting strategies other teams are attempting, and their flaws as well. This information is useful to your drive coach in working with other alliances.