Chief Delphi - New System for Scouting?

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Re: New System for Scouting?

I think there are a lot of teams that would like to see a single, unified scouting system.

As a driver this year, here's what I cared about:

Strategy used (What do they do? Score? Defend? etc.)
How good they were (Do they actually do what they aim to do? How effective?)
Any special abilities (eg, 111 is good at avoiding defense)

From a strategizing standpoint, we care about what they do, not the means by which they do it.

Having a centralized system could be greatly beneficial for teams. If data were collected from all the teams in a regional in a uniform manner, it is feasible that the data would be better than the data a single team could collect.

One idea is to borrow the "rating" system seen on many websites (YouTube, eBay, etc) and apply it to robots in various categories (like those mentioned above). If a significant number of teams participate, meaning there are significant numbers of contributers, you can start applying statistics to it.

The reason this works is the "wiki" principle, the wisdom of the masses. If you have a large number of people watch a match, and rank the robot on a scale (1-5, 1-10, 200-800, w/e), there tends to be a center, an average, of the ranking. (I read once that this happens at about 30 data points.) All that would be needed would be that for a match, you give a robot 5 or 6 ratings in different categories and submit it.

From discussions in IRC, there seems to be significant resistance to a collaborative scouting system amongst teams. (esp the successful ones.)

Does any of that make sense?

Re: New System for Scouting?

I personally like the idea, however a unified system might take away from the "spirit" of scouting, which is an important part for each team.

Re: New System for Scouting?

Personally, it seems odd enough to me that people share their scouting strategies (but I'm not saying bad, I'm willing to give my thoughts, in exchange for others) but I cannot imagine any "common" scouting system working. When it comes down to it, actuall scouting data is collected to help your team compete, and even if someone does create such a system, I have a feeling that successful teams will still rely on their own scouting.

Again, I don't oppose inter-team co-operation, but as long as we have robotics COMPETITIONS, there will always be some competive spirit.

Re: New System for Scouting?

Quote:

Originally Posted by notaPINKtruck (Post 633272)

In our 10 years, The Pink Team has found paper scouting to be cumbersome.

My recommendation as a developer is against PDA scouting. While it seems convenient, its unlikely that enough team members will have PDAs (6) to scout fully, not to mention all of those PDAs running the same OS (PalmOS, Windows Mobile, etc.) Standard laptops are much easier to come by, or be borrowed just for competition periods (this is what we do), rather than purchasing team PDAs.

My advice is that paper is better. I believe it is way easier and managable for a newer team. At Indiana Robotics invitational (iri) pink had about 8 labtops lying around and it took up space and you have to bring all kind of cords and adapters to make sure you can get the laptops going and laptops can be distracting as well, distracting members from the copetition because members can be playing card games. If you use papers, you can have a sheet for each team in a small file folder run the 6 sheets needed to the pits to discuss stategy for the next match. I believe it is all around easier process. (we have used pdas as well)

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