"Pre-Scouting" w/ pics, by regional, to share
 

Last year Manoel and I built and printed a little "scouting book" for the Newton Division in the National Championship to handle for every team in that division. There were pictures of most of the robots, information about their functions and the awards and competitions each team won.

I hope we can do that for the regional this year too (we will be in Philadelphia) and I hope other teams do that for their regionals too.

I have SEARCHed the forum and found similar things, but they were not the same.

I think it shouldn't be very formal, with a given date to do it, but the teams must be concerned (or at least aware) about that.

When you play 2 vs. 2 you must know well your ally and your opponents in order to organize a good strategy and do your best.

The picture and the information about the robots could be obtained from each team after the building season, I think, so they wouldn't worry about people "copying" their ideas

And of course things won't be extremely exact. Sometimes your team doesn't know what your robot will be able to do after you send it to the competition, and in that case how can you explain it to other people?? But that's not usual.

Saying all that in few words:

I think teams from each regional should talk to the other ones to organize a collection of pictures and informations about all the participating robots after the build season and organize them in a document so every team can download it, print it and take it to the competition (and than just update it a little bit while walking through the pits). The object of this is to help every team to know each team they are going to play with so we will have higher level games.

What do you think?

Digo

PS: so bad people won't read this because it shouldn't be in the General Forum.

I'm going to the GLR and the Pitts regional, and Nats (i won't call it the Championship)

I'll help out where ever/when ever i could! :)

You wouldn't have one of your booklets in computer format for me to see, whould you?

If you haven't read any of Jack's posts about FBI, this is sortof what we are trying to do this year. Our website (www.feds201.com) is going to be running a program called FBI- FEDS Bureau of Intelligence. Jack can give more information, but it will basically be a place for teams to share scouting data and pictures from all over. Our PocketPC scouting program (and Heatwave's Palm program) will upload data to our site (or theirs) and create a database of information on teams. Anyone who uses our programs can upload data to FBI, and it can also be manually entered. It should be an easy and effective way to share scouting data with other teams.

I MUST have a copy of that. I hope it's still in a computer in school. If I don't find it, I'll type it again, cause I have a printed one.

I think we managed to make a good resume of the possible robot features, leaving some free space for extra features, and without writing too many things. You don't have time to read too many information about a robot before a match, you need to know only the essencial.

But last year it was basically 1-pull goals 2-score balls. This year I think there will be many more different things happening in the field.


Matt, I'm very glad you are excited with the idea. 201's idea seems very nice, but I don't think most teams will have internet there, so those teams would have to organize the vital information and print it. Maybe having something already organized and printed would be better.

We could combine both, maybe.

If there was demand for it, we could probably make a printable version. We'll definitely make a downloadable version that can be stored on a laptop (assuming we dont have 5 GB files...).

Just an additional note... as a driver in the Newton division last year.... I GREATLY appreciated the pictures. I too would be glad to help organize a picture book to give to all at events.

For the 201 system, everyone will have a least one picture. :)

- It can't be stored on our server (limited space), but easily can on CD's and then just link it.

- The polling data that we collect would be something that you will want to include. - I'll talk to you more as the year goes on.