[2017] Accuracy of scouting boiler goals...
 

After analyzing how scouts would potentially go about tracking a robot's fuel scoring ability, I came to the conclusion that there is virtually no way scouts will be able to make an accurate count of how many "fuel" balls are scored in the lower goal of the boiler. A cursory examination of the game leads me to believe that many robots will be scoring at this goal in bulk (think a "dump truck" robot design) that could be putting anything from ten to a hundred balls into the goal. There is no way that a scout will be able to accurately count each fuel ball that goes into the lower goal. This inexactness is a potentially scary problem that should be recognized by the greater scouting community.

How do you guys think we should adjust our scouting procedures to adjust for this potential inaccuracy?

Re: [2017] Accuracy of scouting boiler goals...
 

One thing that was suggested on my team was to count cycles. How fast can a robot grab a good number of balls and dump? We also thought that we should make an estimate of the balls they have at each dump (maybe just low, medium, high).

Re: [2017] Accuracy of scouting boiler goals...
 

If you filled the entire volume of your robot with spheres, you'd only be able to fit 50 spheres in your robot. Proof:

Maximum volume of robot, M=34,560 inches cubed.
Volume of sphere, S=4/3*PI*5^3=523.6 inches cubed
Optimum packing order of spheres, P=0.74
Maximum amount of balls in robot: M*P/S=49. Q.E.D

Re: [2017] Accuracy of scouting boiler goals...
 

Good idea! In addition, scouts can estimate the accuracy too, and multiply that by the maximum capacity that team claims they can hold to get another reading of how many balls were scored per cycle.

I would imagine that high goal is easier to estimate than low goal though.

Re: [2017] Accuracy of scouting boiler goals...
 

Not quite. The diameter of the sphere is 5", so the radius is 2.5". You're off by a factor of 8.

Edit: Also, the balls are slightly squishy. In addition, you can pile a hill of balls higher than your robot max height and hold them all.

Re: [2017] Accuracy of scouting boiler goals...
 

I have been thinking about this as well. My scouting application (https://www.frcscout.resnick-tech.com), which is open for every team to utilize, just has a button for a high or low goal. I was thinking about how to do bulk scoring and I think I will just have a drop down with increments and allow users to select the number to be submitted. Please feel free to take a look and let me know.

Re: [2017] Accuracy of scouting boiler goals...
 

Last year FMS tracked the high and low goals in teleop separately. I don't know if that will happen again this year or if it will happen in auto too, but TBA may be helpful in this regard (you would have to note if it seems if only one or if two or more robots are scoring in the low efficiency goal, but it may be better than nothing).

Re: [2017] Accuracy of scouting boiler goals...
 

For purposes of the kPa calculation, the FMS will have to keep track of Auto/TeleOp separately since Auto fuel counts for 3 times as much pressure. Also keep in mind that the processing of the fuel for Auto stops when Auto stops and anything left in the hopper is now TeleOp fuel. At the end of the match, the same holds true when at t=0, processing stops regardless of what was still in the hopper at the time. There is no "the ball was in the air so it counts" with this game.

Re: [2017] Accuracy of scouting boiler goals...
 

They will definitely keep track of the number of balls (fuel). The question is whether scouts will be able to determine in the moment the amount. Also the FMS does not determine which robot did what, so there is no way to determine who contributed what number of balls based on the FMS / Blue Alliance data.

Re: [2017] Accuracy of scouting boiler goals...
 

We'll probably make high ball scoring fall into 3 catagories:
A) Amazing!
B) Pretty good.
C) Meh.

Re: [2017] Accuracy of scouting boiler goals...
 

We're going to hopefully be better than 'Meh'! :)

Steve

Re: [2017] Accuracy of scouting boiler goals...
 

You're right. Redo:

Maximum volume of robot, M=34,560 inches cubed.
Volume of sphere, S=4/3*PI*2.5^3=65.5 inches cubed
Optimum packing order of spheres, P=0.74
Maximum amount of balls in robot: M*P/S=391.

I revoke my skepticism about 100 balls being dumped into a goal.

Re: [2017] Accuracy of scouting boiler goals...
 

Don't forget that that volume includes the bumpers... ~3.25 inches from each side of the robot that the frame perimeter must be held within. So maximally, robots themselves can actually only be 23718 cubic inches (and thats in the short orientation, its actually less in the tall orientation, at 21573 cubic inches).

Keep in mind that the random packing density is maximally 64% (optimal planned packing is higher, but thats not going to happen during a match). So we take the number of fuel that an empty space of the size that the robot could fit in to be only 231. Now consider that the robot needs electronics, a frame, wheels, and some mechanism to actually dump the balls, and I think you'd be lucky to see 100, maybe 150 ball dumps, if that's all the robot does.

Now for the discussion of scouting, we are considering the following for our electronic scouting app (that we plan to release before competitions start):

- go around before matches start and ask teams what the maximum number of fuel their robot can hold is, save that data in our app
- during match scouting, have a slider to estimate (to nearest 5 for low goal) the number of fuel scored by a robot, with a marker / upper limit just above the maximum capacity that the team reported their robot being able to score. Gives our scouters a way of visually going - "their robot looks about half full, so must be half of the number they reported", etc.

Re: [2017] Accuracy of scouting boiler goals...
 

I've talked about this with a few other members of my team since I'm the scout guy on our team. I'm sort of at a loss. We've had "super scouters" before. It'd be 1 per alliance along with 1 per robot. That means we'll need 8 scouts a match which might be a problem for us. But I've thought about designating super scouters where their whole job is to count how many balls each team on that alliance scores in the goals. It will be really hard to count low goals but high should be fairly easy. Good thing I have 6 weeks to figure this out... :(

Re: [2017] Accuracy of scouting boiler goals...
 

Calculate teams' component OPR for boiler points if you can. If that isn't doable, just count cycles and guesstimate "less than 30 balls" or "more than 30 balls," or something like that.