Poor team scouting methods?
 

Or is it stingy?
Well see, the thing is. There are a lot of scouting methods out there that deal with electronic gizmos or using laptops (or even a Nintendo DS) but uh, let's say we're short on cash. Does anyone have a method or a paper with questions on it relating specifically to this game? Or any helpful tips for what should be on our scouting sheets?

Any help would be greatly appreciated! :D

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

In the last few years we've made some sheets where you just check boxes and write down numbers and as long as you can get some paper and clip boards your fine. Then we would input the data into an excel document with a page for every team so that at a minutes notice we could pull up info on the teams. We also brought a small printer with us so that we could print out info sheets and give them to our drivers before a match. The system relies on reliable information though. That was our scouting downfall last year, we had issues keeping our scouting info good.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

We haven't written our scouting sheets yet, but team 190 sticks with simple stuff. We use a 2 part system: paper sheets for scouting teams in the pits, and an excel spreadsheet for recording match data. An example of what we might have for our pit data this year:

Drivetrain: Number of wheels, Number of wheels driven
Manipulator: Notes go here
Able to violate 80": Yes/No

The excel spreadsheet will have observational data about what each team does in hybrid and teleop, and how many ways they score points. That's about it. We need 5-6 pages of paper for the pit-data and a laptop (which can easily be replaced with some lined paper)

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

We have done paper scouting for years and it has served us very well (check out our past finishes). We make a pit sheet to gather robot data and then a match sheet and try to get as many teams as possible and as many matches as possible so we have a good account for who does what and what not.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

Some people downplay the effectiveness of pit scouting, but if you don't have the resources to run a match scouting system (without an electronic match scouting system, I think you'd hard pressed to get much usable information from all that raw data), a pit scouting system is better than nothing. At Palmetto last year, we assembled a "Scouting Bible" with the pit scouting sheets from all the teams at the event. We found it pretty useful; before a match, we could tell our partners the best way to defend based on their drivesystem and how it stacked up with our opponents, and I think that is a pretty valuable thing. A system like that is also pretty easy to do, and does not require any fancy equipment.

Just make sure you have people who can make sense of all your info. Our detailed drive system scouting, for example, would be useless to most members of our team, and probably many others; I just happen to specialize in drive systems, so I can pretty accurately predict how one will behave based on the scouting sheet. Make sure you don't waste your time collecting information you can't use.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

In the past we have tried both electronic and paper scouting, but so far neither way has been effective since our scouting information doesn't usually make it to alliance pickings. Someone is usually still walking around with the clipboard or computer. However, this year we were thinking of trying something slightly different. We want to have one master sheet to keep in our pit with a list of all the teams attending the regional and several columns such as "drive train", "scoring", "performance", etc. In addition, we would like to duplicate this sheet and send it out with several people: around the pits, in the stands. Occasionally our scouts will report back to the pit area and add their information to the sheet. That way we hope to have a good idea of what each robot does and how well it performs. And when it is time for the fateful alliance pickings, whoever our team representative is can just grab the master copy and won't have to look for it. To my knowledge we haven't done this before, so unfortunately I cannot say it is a tried-and-true method, but we have high hopes, as always.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

My team has found that trying to get a computer to tell you who to pick is nearly impossible (and often wrong). In the past we have tried to quatify a robots qualities, but found that having a person who watches all the matches and takes basic notes is highly effective. We will attempt to record match stats using paper and pencil (then putting it into an excel spreadsheet for organization). My main advise is don't try to get something to tell you who to pick, just have experienced and knowledgeable team member watch and see who you will work with best (not who is the best necessarily).

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

Hm, well see. We have a laptop with an excel spreadsheet. But I want to have a pit scout team to move about with papers. Does anyone know where I can maybe find one already made because the scout mentor (go figure) is looking for one

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

I have the scouting sheet we used last year. Its in open office *.ods format, but if you want i can send it to you in almost any format. Its very simple, but effective

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

please David send it in a word document or notepad or something simple that a basic computer can handle.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

ill try to put it into word but can you read excel
and what is your e-mail

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

Um, I dunno. Our school is pretty uptight about restriction (we have nothing on the computer) but send it to me that way I suppose.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

here is a link to it as a website

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?k...Ncv4URPWCho7fA

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

:D appreciate it ;)

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

We seem to have done ok with 6 students sitting in the stands recording points scored by each robot, as well as defensive maneuvers, bonus points, autonomous/hybrid score, penalties, and whatnot. Performance seems to be far more important than anything else...so just concentrate on recording performance of the teams, if you can make a relatively simple spreadsheet Friday night that ranks them and figure out kind of which teams you'll want to pick for your alliance (if you are a relatively good seed) that should be all you need from scouting.

Pit scouting is fun because you get to see the robots and talk to the nice people....but performance on the field might be more important in the end.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

Ditto for 330 (and hopefully 1135 this year), except that the spreadsheet is set up long before Friday...it's just populated then. Saturday is also important; sometimes a team has a serious breakdown--or a "nirvana" moment.

Pit scouting is used to help figure out about the team and the robot's potential characteristics.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

It's typically a bad idea to rely only on statistics for your scouting data. Situational circumstances matter a lot, especially with the random matches. Other often less considered information such as how well a team works with an alliance and how well they respond to changes in game situations is very hard, if not impossible, to quantify, but can often make or break an eliminations alliance. I've seen many teams fall prey to this because a team that looked great on paper didn't come through in the pinch.

That one person sitting there can make all the difference...

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

For scouting, the only hard advice I can give is something that's been given many times before : a picture is worth a thousand words.

No matter how much data you collect, friday night when you are reviewing the day making a rough sketch of what picks you may make : it's really hard to remember robots by team numbers. My best advice to you is to get someone to go and take pictures, with a number in the picture, of every robot. Multiple angles if possible, trying to get their manipulator. It's always the best from my experience.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

I absolutely agree. Often, even with extensive scouting - and I think we have one of the more extensive scouting systems - there are still "holes" in the data. I make it a priority to get multiple shots of the teams on Thursday, and then any updates to the robot's configuration on Friday. That way, on Friday night when we begin to look at alliance partners, we also look at the pictures. There are more times than I can count where we saw the picture and said, "Oh yeah, they were the team that did ...." and while we have antidotal info on them, the scouting sheets and records failed to record them. With 6 teams competing every couple of minutes, there are some aspects that we see, but fail to record. Photos help "remind" you of that info.

Also, to address another point mentioned in an earlier post, I agree that performance data is much more important than pit data. We still collect a lot of pit data, but really it has a different purpose. Pit data is a good way to know who the teams are, it acts as a PR function, it gets the students involved in talking to teams, and I have found that our newest team members - usually Freshman and Sophomores - actually learn a lot about the robots when they have to ask how many CIMS, what type of transmission, Omnis vs Mecanums, etc... Secondly, it also keeps them busy, and out of trouble if they have something to do! But, while we record all that data - it is the performance data that tells us how compete in each match. What our alliance partners can do, what the opposing alliance can do, what type of strategy should we employ, etc... and then, finally, it helps us when we are then picking our alliance partners in the finals.

I tell our students that we will lose one, that we should have won, because something unforeseen will happen, but we will win one that we should have lost because of good scouting. That is our scouting mantra!

Best regards,

Steve

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

Same here! Thanks for providing a great explanation of the different aspects of scouting. We take pictures and put them on a laptop in the pits, we have the scouts make notes about which teams seem to be working well together on the field, and we do pit scouting (mostly to get to know the other teams). It all works together, but the performance data from match scouting seems to be most important.

We are developing the Nintendo DS scouting system because we were so impressed with the effectiveness and ease of use of 842's automated scouting system...and we realized that almost all our team members have a DS, so the hardware is mostly paid for....and our main programmer Kevin likes challenges. The real bottleneck with paper scouting is putting the data into a spreadsheet so you can use it easily. An automated scouting system (using whatever you have available or can buy) makes this a painless process, and also allows you to quickly integrate the data from Saturday morning.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

Objective scouting sheets that require no additional thought for the scouters are best. Yes or No, tallies, etc.

Also, to reduce the number of sheets you have floating around, try and get as many matches on to one sheet per team. Try avoid having one sheet per match as things get messy with that many sheets of paper not to mention how many copies you have to make. ~80 matches x 6 for each robot on the field as opposed to ~40 sheets, one per team.

Then you'll want a nice way to organize these sheets. Our experience showed us that accordion folders are not the best idea. If you're in a rush, accordion folders aren't the easiest to use. We like to use huge binders with slash folders.

I hope that helps.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

We took the Program for SVR with all the teams in there, and wrote comments next to them then made a list based on those comments. Cheap and effective.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

We go around and get a photograph of each team's robot in the pits and prepare a pit scouting sheet. Along with this we scout from the stands. Everything gets dumped into excell. We also try and prepare a brag sheet with a picture of our robot that we give to anyone that asks. If you prepare your own brag sheet, you are more than likely able to get all the information correct that the hopeful alliance partner needs. We have been known to not devulge all of our Hybrid possibilites, just to keep them guessing.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

I know that the year before I was on the team, they used paper. They would take a piece of paper and write down the scores and key points. They would also add in extra details about the robots that they thought would be helpful for the mentors and drivers in their selection of alliance members for the finals. I hope this helped.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

I find the information gathered in pit scouting clunky and unreliable and seeing as how I run scouting for my team(s) and I have a distaste for it, we don't pit scout. We have 8-10 people in the stands with each assigned a group of teams, they record the statistical information that we want on to a master sheet for that team (each team has 1 sheet) as well as any relevant things they notice (if they are being easily defended/playing defense/how are they moving/driver ability). Before every match we get the data for each of the teams in the match (both alliance and opponent) and formulate a strategy based on what our data tells us. We then go and discuss with our alliance partners on what we want each member to achieve for that match (Defend team xxxx, place the ball at the end of the match, who handles the balls, where we want to drive). From there it is all in the hands of the drive teams to do what needs to be done.

As for my statement that pit scouting is unreliable, just because a team says they can hurdle or move at 18 fps doesn't make it true. I would rather see a team put up high numbers during the match and to see them perform on the field rather than in their shop back home.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

I agree with objectiveness but I also want to point out that subjectiveness is also useful especially when you know who made the comment. Then you can talk to them about what they saw and it brings in a whole other dimension to a robot.

I also agree about having one sheet per team but the way I kept it organized is by using one scouter to just organize the sheets and hand out the ones we would need. This was very very effective. That person would also collect the completed sheets and sort them back into the pile of team sheets

EDIT

Can you tell me a bit about this please. I dont know enough about these drive trains.

Also nice icon InfernoX14

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

We have considered electronic scouting... but our scouters like their paper method. Here's what we do:

Pits: Two students go through the pits, stopping for each team. They take pictures of the robot so we can remember it, recognize it, and see it if we need to. They also talk to the team members about how it works, what it can do, etc. Sometimes you find out that teams have other capabilities that might not always come out in a match. You can ask what they think works the best/worst on their robot. Whatever questions you see fit. We have a sheet that identifies key characteristics. You can figure out what you want to know about your partners, and put it on your sheet.

Matches: We have six students watch each match, one for each team. They record how the robot played during the match. For example, if a robot hurdled twice, then flipped over, that sends a different message than a robot that hurdled twice and then never got control of the ball again because their partners had it, which sends a different message than a robot that hurdled twice and then their arm broke... you get the picture. Just make sure you keep track of any necessary explanations. We also note what their hybrid mode does, how well they handle the ball, how quickly things get done, if they tip over easily, how many of each point-scoring task they can do, if they got any penalties... all the stuff you'd want to know about your alliance partners.

Then all the data for each team is kept together in a binder. We put the teams in numerical order, and then add data as the day progresses.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

I can try, but it requires a pretty extensive knowledge of drivetrains. At the most basic level, we can compare coefficients of friction and determine if a robot can push another, and if so, how easily. Beyond that, it gets a bit more complicated. I've been really into drive system design since I was a sophomore, so by now, I can look at a drive system's specs and pretty accurately predict how it will preform, which is a skill gained primarily by reading every thread (2001 to present) on CD about drive systems, reading every whitepaper I can find on drive systems, as well as practical experience. Spending a lot of time running the numbers on theoretical drive system designs helps too.

Some basic rules of thumb (these don't apply in all cases, but are true in most): if the robot uses a 4WD with traditional wheels (no onmis) and their wheelbase is significantly longer than their track width, their turning will be bouncy and the robot will not be very maneuverable. If it has a 6WD with a lowered centre wheel, tapping the corner should spin it relatively easily. If a robot is using IFI traction wheels and is has a one-speed gearbox geared to go really fast (like 11+ft/s), the breakers on their drive motors will pop readily in pushing matches. Mecanum, kiwi, and other omni designs (not including swerves) tend to be really easy to push out of your way. And so on.

Basically, by using my knowledge of drive systems, we can advise alliance partners on how to defend against our opponents by exploiting the weaknesses in their drive systems (unfortunately, swerve drives have no weaknesses to exploit...), while capitalizing on the strengths of the defender's own. You could probably do something similar for counter-defense defense, but that is a bit harder to plan. Anyway, this year, such strategizing is not very useful given the restrictions on defense. You'd have better luck exploiting the weaknesses of a robot's gripper design.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

Pit scouting has its place and can be useful if the right information is gathered about the team and the robot. The pit scouting is where the vital first impression is made. I agree robot performance on the field can't be gained with pit scouting but you can see how the robot works and how it was built.

We scout matches two different ways. We get the raw stats from each match on Friday and put this into excel. The speard sheet I set up weights the different types of scoring and the totals the points for the robot. I saw a spread sheet that incorporated averages into it and I will update my spread sheet to do the same as it was a real easy way to rank the robots.

The second way we rank the robots is a more objective look at the robot. 3 or 4 scouts watch the matches and determine a score on how effective the robot was at playing the game.

These two scores are combined as a multiplier and then the teams are ranked. We have been fairly good at getting the top teams ranked correctly. It is the teams that reside in places 16 - 24 that we have a hard time with, but the multiplier works to clear that up. I am hoping the averaging method will also help clear up those middle robot rankings.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

I agree with a previous statement of having someone watch all the matches, while taking a few notes. Qualities such as driver skill, defensive skill, and driver choices (knock down a ball, run a lap, or play defense, or hurdle a ball) are all hard to quantify in numbers, especially if it's done by different people. It's much easier to compare robots if that one person has seen all of them preform and can compare their actions and decisions.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

As a former scouting lead and general strategy guru, I can speak to this.

In my experience, objective evidence is king. Subjective information, regardless of the source, is riddled with issues. My reasons for avoiding subjective information:

1. Scouts form biases early and often. The number of times I've looked over the objective data and realized that my thoughts or someone else's are inconsistent with the data is astounding, and it's often due to the fact that a scout will see a team do well early and then over-credit that team for later alliance successes. The same concept works in the reverse (over-crediting teams that strike scouts as bad with later alliance failures), but to a lesser extent.

2. Opinions differ scout to scout. Everyone is rubbed differently by what they see in a robot. Period. Anything that is debatable as to whether the robot in question is at fault or another robot will have multiple opinions. Whose opinion do you trust? Any of them? None of them? What makes one scout more trustworthy than another? How do you determine any that objectively? See my point?

3. Some scouts are smarter/more experienced than others. Hence, point #2. Good luck determining how much intelligence/experience helps an individual scout - it differs from person to person.


Ultimately, subjective scouting often gives you more issues than helpful feedback. Sometimes you'll get lucky with it, but most of the time, these issues will bias your data and taint your results. Don't risk it.

Thus, I reiterate what has been said in favor of objective scouting. Go by the numbers. Crunch them in excel Friday night. If you can, set up a software database to do it for you, but if your team lacks the resources to put all of its scouts on laptops (very few teams can), then take the data on paper and enter it into the database on one laptop.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

i have been doing scouting at events for 6 years, and now that im in college we still use the paper, picture, general pit scouting method. Especially now its a matter of molding the students to what you want to get out of them. For example, i try to sit with them all day thursday (if time permits) and will do an active commentary about the match that's going on. So we were watching matches in AZ and right away saw that 1726 was an excellent hurdler, and then we went into a quick description of how they hurdled. Now even though they were throwing balls on thursday that did not mean they could/would on fri/sat, but you know they are a team to watch out for. And sure enough, they were one of the best teams in AZ. We had another college mentor that was injured and he was just inputting match data into an excel sheet, honestly that sheet was useless with out a description. When you encourage descriptions you will mostlikely get their honest opinion about a robot as well, since the comments usually have to be short and to the point, "amazing or Terrible" you should be able to get a feel for the team by watching matches.

To me it would be like going to buy a car and only asking if it runs and what features it has, with out actually driving it and seeing for your self what work it may need, and if it actually does what the owner says it can do (aka pit scouting) It's all about conveying to the scouts how you want the data

In 2004 as a member of MORT (founding member of their now stellar scouting team), sitting in the stands for every match and being in a position to pick we were able to find robots that were amazing for us. 281 and 122, 281 i don't remember exactly what they werwe ranked, but they did well at palmetto, but our sleeper team was 122 Nasa Knights. This machine was truly amazing and was able to do it all, we were able to see that despite their poor performance in the quals, we knew they were a strong 3rd partner. If we had shown our team rep just the "raw data" there is NO WAY we would have picked them, that data does not show potential of teams, and i think you miss out on what could be the missing peice to you championship winning alliance.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

After using a scouting method where we mostly used subjective information in Trenton, my team was thinking of switching over to almost entirely objective information. However this^ makes a lot of sense. Does anyone have any suggestions about the best categories to look at and best types of descriptions to use in terms of the more subjective information?

Thanks.

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

ours consists of a hybrid mode section, and just a blank spot to write down what they did, (# of laps, knocked ball, etc.) we are going to add a column for # of penalty points.

Then we have a small section for Drive Train that we would use to pit scout, (type of drive system, #of wheels/motors,speed) and space for comments on how it actually performs( fast, decent speed, slow, trouble turning, easily pushed etc.)

And then for Herding, hurdling, knocking ball each have a y/n choice to circle and then we have "How?" and the "comments"

"how" is a description of what mechanism they used, and then how effective.

If you want pm me with your email and i will send you a copy of what we use

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

Remember, anyone can go to:
http://www.firstobjective.org

Take 10 seconds and sign up, then pick My Team.

Once you are on My Team, pick 2008 Team Tool.

You can enter any FRC team number and get a nice report of their performance for this year.

If you have a mobile phone that can access the Internet, point it to:
http://www.firstobjective.org/myteam/teamdata.wml

This will give you the same info right on your phone.

AND IT'S ALL FREE!!!

Roger

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

our scouters are amazing at what they do. They have a system set up of 5 scouts and 1 head scout, who are each assigned to watch one robot during a single match. They record various characteristics... like driver experience, how much 'fumbling' they do while picking up the ball, average hurdling/lap times, amount of defense played on them, etc. our goal with the scouting thing is to pick out the best robots from the crowd, so if a good team gets paired with an incompatible alliance against a dominating alliance, the one good team will still get recognition amongst our scouters.

Its a neat system, and all without computers- its all paper, pencil, and mind!

Re: Poor team scouting methods?
 

Oh too kind...

All this conversation has gotten me thinking though, about the difference between subjective and objective scouting. We've tried objective during the beginning part of last year, and my problem with that is that a robot that scored slowly with 4 ringers with no defense would register the same on a sheet as a robot that scored 4 under heavy defense. One's clearly better, but not according to the sheet.

Then again, at the Regionals this year though, I did see evidence of a lot of scouter bias. I guess once people make up their minds about a robot, it takes a lot to make them change their minds.

I think in the end I'd prefer a subjective system operating under a skilled, trained scouting squad. We'll have to see in Atlanta.

Speaking of Atlanta too, if any teams want to stop by Team 1124 in the crowds (look for the blue superman shirts), our scouting team would love to share our data.