Scouting Questions
 

I have never seen any real need for pit scouting question and find them many time annoying. I thought it would be fun to make a list of questions you don't like, or unusual ones you have heard.

Short list of questions I hate:
How fast are you? my answer is always ludicrous speed
How many wheels do you have? Really?
What can your robot do? my usual answer is - fly.

Re: Scouting Questions
 

Last year, I heard: would you be willing to cheesecake?

No, I would not. We have planned our own strategy and a perfectly fine robot, thanks.

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The only question I like to hear in regards to Pit scouting is "Can i take a picture of your robot?"

General interest questions to learn more about the robot are always welcome.

But having a line of people waiting with pen and paper to ask questions that they would better be served watching on the field is a waste of everyone's time and a safety hazard as the pits are crowded enough of people just looking around.

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"How many wheels do you have?" I usually tell the kids to take a look and make sure we didn't forget any. It's also fun to ask the same question back to them and see how they respond.

I always love it when kids ask how fast you do something after they just found out it was your first event for the season. I typically tell them to time us in our first match, and hopefully it will keep getting better.

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"How tall is your robot"
*scribbles down notes*
"How wide is your robot"
*scribbles down notes*
"How long is your robot"
*scribbles down notes*
"Thank you!"
*Walks away*

Student in the pit with me: Those numbers weren't right.
Me: I know.

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Last year I honestly considered talking to my team about having a QR code linked to a document with all the questions you normally see. Either way favorite question is.
"What does your robot do?"
The reply from me generally is.
"dunno"

Re: Scouting Questions
 

can confirm- I scouted you at crossroads 2014.
One of our alums was in our pit while someone was pit scouting us, and his answer to this question was "like, 30" and the scouter just walked away. He apparently thought that meant total number of wheels on the entire robot. I will admit, our pit scouting questionnaire last year was about 25 questions long, and it was purely because I wanted lots of ways to sort the data... not that we actually used more than 5 of those questions the entire season. Apparently my pit scouter liked spending so much time talking to the teams, though, so at least she was enjoying herself.

My favorite one is always "what is your strategy?" It's whatever makes sense for that match! Our strategy is to sit on top of the rock wall, for the entire match. Not because we're stuck, but because the robot likes the view.

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IMO I find pit scouting to be important for the first few matches because you don't have accurate match scouting data. But after about thirty matches have gone by if you are still pit scouting there is really no need except to take pictures and find our fear ratios for how they would do in defense

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My team has never, not once, used results from pit scouting for anything - the results you get from that never match up with the actual results from the field!

That said, it's a highly useful tool for us to use to force students to get out there and mingle, and learn a little about other robots!

This year might be a little different, though... asking teams which defenses they can handle (with appropriate followup questions to understand how they actually handle each defense) could be very useful, at least in the beginning. And depending on how things go, you may or may not see a team even attempt one or more specific defenses for the entire qual matches! Either the defense won't be on the field for some matches, or one of their alliance members will do it, or they'll tackle other ones first and get their RP without needing to touch it. It could be very interesting to see how that goes!

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We put together a trifold flyer with the most common questions answered and hand it to them if no one was available to talk. Otherwise we try to oblige them. No need to be nasty or condescending gracious profesionalism right

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I am pretty disappointed with most of the answers here. To be honest, my team does take a serious note when it comes to Pit Scouting - and we make certain to prep our Pit Team for the questions.

We are a team that has needed much from our competitors, and we truly rely on our Pit team to find these answers/help. We also try to aid other teams via Pit Scouting.

I may be taking this 'scouting thing' a bit differently than the rest of the responders, but here is what we try to do:

1. We actually glean info from the Pit scouting. Ask the right questions and you can get the right answers.

2. My team finds inspiration for our next season in what the other teams are doing in the off season.

3. Gauge a level of awareness of the 'whole' team. Kids are honest - and they will tell you some awesome and amazing stories about their teams!

4. Find out what teams are making a big splash.

5. Infer how teams will pick in the alliance selection. This was a great help in 2014 at the MSHSL tournament. We knew our 'fate' before the No. 1 Alliance Captain announced it. We adjusted accordingly. From 2530's video's you can hear the confusion of alliance selection (listen close at the :48 sec mark). As you can tell, our Captain (Ginger Power) didn't hesitate as we already 'knew' we were not going to be picked by 2175. We put together the alliance that we knew would be the best to knock off the other two returning champs.

6. To get to know the other teams. This is about the kids competing AND celebrating their accomplishments.

7. The Pit team likes to brag up the robot - let them have at it!

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"On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your bumper quality?"... because that's somehow relevant information...

Pit scouting is useful for the things you can't figure out from watching the robot on the field. How mechanisms work and things of that nature. It could also be important this year for robot dimensions - have to make sure all 3 robots can fit while climbing.

If only teams would use pit scouting efficiently...

Re: Scouting Questions
 

Or effectively... Ginger Power - we don't agree on much ;)
l
l
V

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I like to collect some information about the drive team, like who their coach is (mentor or student), how much practice time they've had with their drive configuration, etc. Our team always has student coaches, so if our alliance partner's coaches are mentors, we'll send an adult with our team to talk strategy so our student coach doesn't get steamrolled over an adult coach with say...an abrasive personality. We're going to make sure our coach's voice is heard.

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Gauging bumper quality is very important; it's strongly correlated with robot performance. But I wouldn't ask a team to rate their own bumper quality..

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I'm not sure which team asked you that but never cheesecake a robot that finishes in 2nd in Archimedes (unless 1023 asked you to add canburglars)

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The biggest reason for pit scouting is for early qualification matches and pictures. The bigger "powerhouse" teams probably use it for cheese caking. We like to strategize with teams before qualification matches but I'm not sure if we really ever used the pit scouting data for that. Since we are in such a small district, It is only truly helpful the first two events. Then we usually can figure out what teams can do later in the day and the pit scouting data isn't very important. Pictures are just about the only good thing for pit scouting. I remember referring to robots by descriptions like "the purple robot" and pictures would have been really helpful.

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At champs last year I went to every* team in Hopper and asked them 2 or 3 questions. "how much do you weigh", if the answer to the weight was really close to 120 i asked if they could remove any weight. and "if i give you something to put on your robot would you put it on?" Which is basically asking if teams are willing to be cheesecaked but i wanted the teams to really think about what I was asking.

I did this all while not wearing a 2826 shirt to get honest answers. Every team that the question was asked seriously to (see below) that said no to being cheesecaked was automatically removed from consideration if they didn't have elite level can burglars.

I'm not saying that cheesecaking will happen to the degree it had last year. I'm just pointing out that teams should honestly consider having it done to their robot after an honest and humble review of their robots capabilites (which by Championships should be blatantly obvious)

And no I'm not saying that you were incorrect in saying no flat out, I'm just adding more to the conversation of teams who say no but really should say yes.



*Yes I asked 987 and 33 and 948 and etc even though I new the answer would be no.

Re: Scouting Questions
 

Some of the responses in this thread more than disappoint me. They disgust me.

If a student approaches your pit with a part they needed machined or a wire they needed soldered, do you ridicule them? Give them false information and send them on their way? Nudge their elbow while they use your band saw?

If a scouter asks a question with an easily-observed answer, I invite them into our pit to take a closer look at the robot. If the pit is too busy at the moment, I invite them to return at a better time.

If a scouter asks a question that seems irrelevant to me, I look for the logic behind the question and answer it as fully as I can.

I train my scouters to introduce themselves and ask for the chance to view the robot. We have a set of desirable data that is infeasible to collect during matches, so that is their focus.

Our scouters are also trained to find teams in need of help. If they have no autonomous, ask if we can send a programmer over to try to get something going. If they are have nothing but a pile of parts and the only mentor who showed up was their teacher (who happens to teach English), can we send over some of our mechanical and electrical people to help out? (true story)

I sincerely hope some of you reassess your outlook in this area. If you feel you are getting useless data, ask better questions and train your scouters better. Scouters are the eyes and ears of your teams.

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

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No, and this is a horrible comparison.

We also answer all pit scouting questions honestly and don't give useless info.

However we don't pit scout for many of the reasons posted here.

We have a sub team at comps whose sole purpose is to go to teams and ask them if they need help and find ways to provide it. Either through us or another team. We don't need our scouters to do this.

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I know, Eric. Wave is one of the teams that does this (and so many other things) right. Sadly, a quick read through this thread and others on CD shows that that behavior is not universal.

I will stand by the comparison, though.

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I agree. I don't see a ton of value in pit scouting, but purposefully providing false answer, isn't very good. On a very practical level, if I find the answers provided don't match the truth, I'm totally going to knock you down our pick list. Either you don't know your robot, you're a jerk or you don't take it seriously. I prefer not to compete with and depend on those teams.

Re: Scouting Questions
 

I had no idea that so many folks treated scouters like this... Wow.

We do pit scouting for different reasons, depending on the game. This year, we are going to want to know what sort of defenses they "think" they can cross -early in the competition, we will not have much information on this at all. Our scouters will look at wheels and drivetrains... Etc.... When we have seen a robot at a different competition, we'll ask them about upgrades... If the robot struggled with something either a previous week or earlier in the weekend, we'll ask how they are doing with fixing the issue.. We like to get a feel for the personality of a team - we we enjoy working with them in eliminations?

More importantly, however, we often send our younger kids out to pit scout so they can interact with other folks in FIRST, experience Gracious Professionalism, and see how other teams operate - both with robot construction but personal interactions. Commonly, we'll send more introverted students around in pairs as it provides moral support and helps them to learn to engage and interact better with others.

I don't judge what other scouts ask us. Just as we send scouters out for lots of different reasons, we assume other teams do as well. We also recognize that often the information pit scouts bring back is completely secondary to the experience they are getting....

Reading some of the comments above, I understand why some of my kids at Champs last year decided they didn't want to pit scout any more. :(

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For those of us who have replied with scenarios of giving false answers. I can only speak for myself, but I don't think the intent was to actually leave it at the false answer. It was more a sarcastic commentary on the questions they are asked sometimes, especially without providing context for the reasons behind the question. To cover my butt, I've never actually done what I posted.

I thought this thread was supposed to be for fun. "I thought it would be fun to make a list of questions you don't like, or unusual ones you have heard."

Re: Scouting Questions
 

Our pit scouting questions are pretty comprehensive:

• How many linear feet of zip ties are contained within your robot?
• How bouncy are your bumpers?
• What is the speed of your robot in furlongs per fortnight?
• What do you think of our pants?
• Do you have any mentors named Matt or Nate?

Re: Scouting Questions
 

Echoing what other posters have said, asking for a photo and "tell me about your robot" are pretty valuable. Whether intentionally misleading or not, our pit scouts know to take any information obtained via pit scouting with a grain of salt. They are looking for rats nests of wire, things hanging into the drivetrain area, and other issues that might make something hard to repair quickly in a playoff situation.

My personal favorite pit scout question last year was "Are you more of an offense or defense robot?"

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I'm going to make this pretty clear. I draw a line between pit scouting and networking. I value networking way more then I value pit scouting. This year for pit scouting what I personally need is speed, dimensions, drive base. That's it, I want the information quickly I want it clean and once that's done I want students to network.
"But what do you mean by networking?"
Networking to me is socializing and helping other teams, figuring out how other teams function and learning about what makes teams successful. Serious announcement where a team requests something over a P.A system? I want a scout on that. Sweet dance group going on nearby the field? Lets see if we can scout up a game of ninja or get something fun going on. Six weeks of building and working hard and I want students to enjoy the regional. Last year we had a student because he had free time got to talk to an engineer at Lockheed Martin, considering that he is going into college and enjoying engineering this was far more valuable then any data he could have found in a pit. All sorts of people show up to these competitions and its a wonderful chance for all the students to make connections into the industry they want to pursue upon graduating highschool.

TL:DR Scouting is important for winning but my personal biggest priority is not that we win a regional, its that the students get the most out of the time they have.

Re: Scouting Questions
 

You make a good point. If we had been in Hopper, we probably would have considered your question. Unfortunately, the way the question was asked felt so impersonal, almost rude.

Let me elaborate: The way I was asked about cheesecaking sounded as though they were meaning "Oh, we don't care if your robot is any good, we just need to cheesecake someone. Are you able to do that?" If the person who asked had cared a little bit more to ask about our robot the way we built it rather than just cheesecake, I would have been more lenient to talk. But I felt no sense of respect or interest from them.

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In 2014 I would always reply 2% the speed of sound, which was legitimately our top speed. When they didn't believe me I would tell them 10 m/s and they bought that value....

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This is really important to remember. We ONLY use pit scouting data as filtering criteria for other, more useful data. However, pit scouters can make it much easier on themselves by asking questions the right way, in order to get the answers they want quickly. For example "how many wheels are on your robot" vs. "how many wheels are on your drivetrain." It's still a silly question, but a good example nonetheless.

Also, teams being pit scouted can make it much easier on themselves if they just answer the question asked. I have asked people "what type of wheels do you use on your drivetrain" then they tell me how many motors, their speeds, brand, reduction, shifting mechanism, and encoder type on gearboxes, spacing between wheels, center drop height, then forget to tell me what kind of wheels are on the drivetrain.

Here's the rules I give my pit scouters:
1) Spend 5 minutes at any team's pit, maximum.
2) When you walk up to them, try to get someone's attention, but don't be overly aggressive. Then, introduce yourself, then say "would you mind answering a few questions about your robot."
3) If their robot is there, it's probably not a good time to ask them questions.
4) If we're short on time and you feel that you absolutely must ask them questions while their robot is in the pit, don't approach them if they're busy. Actually, if they look really busy, ask them if they need help, and have one of the other pit scouters cover for you. If their problem isn't an area of your expertise, get someone else from our pit, as many as they need to get the job done.
5) Smile. Shake their hand, regardless of how dirty or greasy or whatever it may be, and wish them the best of luck. If you think their robot is cool, tell them. Be friendly, not creepy.
6) You can stop halfway through an interview if one of the following occurs: a) they tell you their robot does something that either isn't possible, or is against the rules. b) they are excessively rude to you. c) there are 7 different people in their pit all talking over each other, trying to all answer your questions. If any of these three conditions occur, put "DNP" in the notes column of the spreadsheet, and move on.
7) Never forget the picture.
8) If you ask if they do something and they answer "We tested it in our shop, yes," write down no. If they need to put a qualifier on it, then it's BS.

And, because I had to, some of my favorite questions to hear:
1) "What are your drivetrain speeds?" fast, and faster. Seriosuly, half of the teams I come by don't even have an answer, and another 30% usually give you something that's total guesswork, and in some stupid unit like inches per microsecond. Only time we've ever asked this was in 2014, when being fast was actually relevant.
2) "What is your preferred teleop" the 135 second one, with medium fries, and is that available on Amazon Prime? This question is so vague that even to the team taking the data, it's useless. If you want to know if a team does what you would want your elims partner to do, ask if they do those things.
3) "How many wheels" around 40. I mentioned this earlier- vague, pretty obvious, and completely useless.
4) "How fast do you do xyz" I have no response to this. If you want to know, go get out a stopwatch and watch the matches.
5) "Does the robot load from the front or the back?" It loads from the side, yes on a tank drive. This is one I got a hundred times in 2014, and I never understood the reason.
6) "Do you use a flywheel shooter, a catapult, or a puncher?" An anti-gravity cannon. Once again, what does this matter? If I'm getting it through the goal, who cares?

Rant over. Seriously though, if scouters weren't rude and inefficient with their scouting, and teams weren't rude and unhelpful back, pit scouting would be so much less painful.

Re: Scouting Questions
 

You definitely did not ask 948. We were in Curie.

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9 and 5 are close to each other

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I second that networking tends to be more valuable than the data collected, though a picture is the most valuable piece of data. If teams have information about their bots to hand out, then great, we don't have to ask a lot of questions, but the interactions make a big impression on the students.

Re: Scouting Questions
 

I actually looked at the information from our Pit Scouting sheets at World's this last year. I stayed up all night before the elimination rounds and searched through all of our pit scouting sheets to see which robots could pick up a sideways can. We didn't have sufficient information regarding this from our match data. It heavily influenced the choice of our 3rd robot - who could pick up sideways cans beautifully. We were captain of our alliance and made to the finals in Curie. Our sideways-can-picking up robot made a huge difference for us.

I agree that Pit Scouting often is not very useful. It seems to be most helpful at the beginning of competitions when you have no data on a team - or - when you're desperately searching the night before eliminations for some extra information that could make a difference in competition.

Re: Scouting Questions
 

We have two types of pit scouting, and we don't leave these to random members of our team:

1) Pictures of the robots to use for ID purposes in our scouting. This done before competition starts by a trained team member. Smile! :)
2) Evaluation of specific metrics, including bring measuring devices and other equipment. This is done by senior team members (often subteam leads) and mentors. This is usually done during the competition on a subset of teams.

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Very similar to what we do. Always check TBA first to see if there's a picture of the robot we can easily get without having to get pictures at the event. This season, we're cutting back pit scouting a lot to only contain the basic metrics we need for filtering of teams. Once we know if there's any specific questions we want to ask certain teams, that happens late friday or early saturday. When doing this, I usually wear a black sweatshirt over my team shirt to keep answers unbiased and to make sure I don't cause any false pretenses.