Competition Scouting
 

Last year at the competitions, we did alot of scouting about other teams that we would be competing with and against so we could strategize about our coming matches, but it seemed like it took too much time to gather the information and thus we had no time to use it (the one time we did think about our next match we beat a previously undefeated team that was always victorious because they were strong enough to pull a Hummer). If there was more time for planning matches, I think they would be more exciting and competitive. I was thinking about setting up a computer at the competition that would already have information and statistics about teams so you could go there and quickly learn about the teams in your next match and have more time for planning (it would also get our name out and about). Of course, this would elminate scouting, which I enjoyed (and it also got some pesky kids out of the pit).
Any ideas on how to do this or whether or not to do it?

This sounds like a good idea, but it is a little impractical for one team to scout an entire competition. There is already a resource similar to this on the web at soap108.com.

P.S. This should have been posted in the strategy forum under scouting:D

What a great resource. When is it usually updated during the competition?

they do real time video, stats and scoring at the competitions that SO@P goes to. there's lots of interesting and useful data that they compile.

real time huh? WOW! Now if only I could go online at the competition. Perhaps I could check on the Thursday and Friday nights of the competition.

Scouting really helped out team out at the Canadian regional. Four of our college students walked around the first few hours getting info from every team from team number, robot type, picture, description, strategy, etc. Then that same day, we set up a Microsoft Access database on our laptop... type in a team number, get a page with picture and all that info. Then we made many options searchable and with a few people working on it, we ended up placing 2nd.

well, i know that they have in the past... the 2001 midwest regional, i believe. they do tape the matches at some competitions and put them online... im not sure what capabilities that they have now

I know last year at Nats, some of the people from Team 45, other teams (sorry I can't remember) and us all kinda worked in shifts on palm pilots. There was a program already on it, and we just filled it out, then the info was loaded onto a computer. Now if there were only some kinda huge effort that involved many teams... Soap is a great resource!
Anyways, the only problem I find about scouting is that everyone has different views and different a basis to judge robots on. Some may give a bot a 2 in a certain category, while another person may give it a 4 in the same category. We also had a hard time getting all the info together in a presentable, easy to read format last year. However, I think this year will be better since last year was our first year to really actually scout the entire time :)

scouting website
 

If i had skill with making websites, i would do this... but here's my idea and maybe one of you could implement it:

Create an online database with one page for each team. On this page, people can upload pictures of that team's robot and post their opinions of that robot. Also, we could do something similar to the Polls taken on this Chief Delphi website. For instance, people could vote their opinion (good/fair/poor) about certain aspects of the robot, such as speed, grabbing ability, driving, strategizing, ect... We'll see the percentage of who thinks what, this way, when many people pool thier opinions together, it may be easier to gain the truth. Obviously as more competitions occure, more information will be on these websites. Teams may post information about their own robot befor competition, however we may only gain their optimistic opinions of the robot and therefore the website may not be too reliable. But at least you could get initial pictures and component information.

Re: scouting website
 

If this could be updated very quickly, I think it's something to go for. Excellent idea. I'm just wondering how it would work to update very quickly. Internet access at all events would be nice.

Also, how does SOAP's rating scale work?

Re: Re: scouting website
 

BINGO!!! That's exactly what i'm doing on www.feds201.com! There is a team list of all the teams with a member registered to the site. Right now, one member from each team can post basic team info in a special page that you can access right from the team list. There is also a 'links' section to take advantage of other peoples web space where people can link pics to. Then there is a 'Team forum'. This is a special forum, once again accessible from the team list, where any info can be posted about that team. Info can be posted by 'Guests' so that people don't need to register to put in their $.02 If you do register though, they your team forum will have a link on the main page to go to your own team forum.

Also, in the Team profile section, where it says Fantasy Robotics, that will be replaced with a section where people will be able to vote on what that team's bot can do. (Ex: Last year some of the fields would have been: Goals, Balls, Traction, ...) They will be in 'poll' format so that an easy avg. can be taken. I only have one problem. I know, that it is annoying to many (including myself) to have to register for every different site to input data. But... if i don't make people register to vote, then people will be able to vote 100's of times for one team. So... if i could have some input on that, it would be great!

Finally, We will try to have a common rating scale. Maybe give examples of what is 1 is, what a 5 is, what a 10 is. Don't really know, but i do know that one of the biggest probs of sharing data is that people rate things differently. SO... trying to establish a 'standard' will be something i'll try for.

For more info see: www.feds201.com ( http://www.feds201.com/team.php?mode=list and http://www.feds201.com/viewforum.php?f=25 ) or CD's scouting forum.

Jack

Re: Re: scouting website
 

I did a little bit of scouting for SOAP (or WASH, i dont quite remember which one) during nats last year, and we used Palms to record the results of each match. There were a series of "options" that you would choose from for each robot, such as: speed to goal, what their primary "move" or function was, how well they did it (on a scale of 1-5), etc, as well as additional comments. If you are referring to the number after a certain function on SOAP's website, this is how it was assigned

Hope this helps,
Cory

Ah yes, the annual threads about scouting. Don't worry, I won't spam as much or be as annoying as I was last year ;)

The scouting program that David, Raul, and Cory are talking about is WASH, a set of Palm & PC applications developed by a Wildstang student and myself. Other teams (like 45, 100, and about 10 others that haven't been mentioned in this thread) that used the Palm program to scout uploaded the data to our laptop and we then gave copies of the PC database to the teams that helped us scout. This way all the teams had all the data. After (and sometimes during) the competition we also uploaded all our data to SOAP so they could make it available on their website for everyone.

Another great Palm scouting program was created by 312 - Heatwave. I saw it for the first time in FL and loved it. It actually inspired me to improve the functionality and usabilty of WASH.

Jack, you're already thinking along the correct lines with respect to the rating scale. It's tough to get two different people to give the same rating to a bot. That's why we tried (sometimes unsuccessfully) to use objective data, like drive time to goal, and number of balls picked up & scored. But it's not possible to break everything down into objective data, and a subjective rating is necessary. Try to give your scale meaning; instead of simply 1-5, tell people that a 1 means the bot couldn't even push a goal and a 5 means they could drag 3 goals and 2 other bots across the field. Tell people that a 5 is reserved for a "best in class" type robot.

Mike

yeah, our team participated in WASH last year, and I even ran the laptop at West Michigan Regional. I thought the data was useful for many things, but It wasn't something someone could use to really pick another team for the finals because of it's subjectiveness. Its main use was just for drive team to look over before a match to see what they were up against. I liked it, i think it was a good system and It was also a good way of impreoving relations with other teams.

SOAP will be at UCF, Chicago, and Houston(if we qualify). We provide access to our database to all teams via the web, the LAN at the competition(if there is one, otherwise we have our own) our wireless access points(802.11b) and laptops at our station. As our driver, I can tell you SOAP makes a big difference. Going up to the field knowing what your opponents can do, and what your ally can really do (as opposed to what they claim to do) and your performance against similiar bots can really help you. The problem with stat sheets and such is they are completely subjective. With SOAP we provide the actual video of the matches, and WASH gives us data averaged out over a large number of people (hopefully improving its accuracy).