Scouting Database
 

Hi!
This is Yanika Schneider, from Team #100 (Woodside).
This year we have come up with a revolutionary new technique that will simplify scouting forever: : the Scouting Database.

The purpose of the database is to have relatively accurate information about everyone's robots before the competitions take place. Our goal is to have at least 2 contacts for each team on the West Coast, and possibly all FIRST Teams.

Right now, we are in the process of getting as many contacts as possible (we currently have 38 teams in our database). Two weeks after Jan. 5 we are planning to send out an email to everyone on the database, asking them what their robot is able to do (whether it can perform specific tasks, etc). We will mail everyone the information we've gathered. A week before the first regional, we will send out another email, asking the teams to update our info.[/list]That way, with everyone's cooperation, we will know exactly what each robot is SUPPOSED to do before the Competitions even begin!!!

If you are interested in helping us with the Scouting Database, please email our team: woodsiderobotics@yahoo.com .

We have contacts with the following teams:
022
061
100
108
111
114
115
118
155
166
173
192
236
234
254
255
256
258
295
298
330
359
362
365
368
376
409
419
481
581
604
605
609
636
668
702
814
840

wow
 

Thats quite the job you've assigned yourself...just a note, the keystroke for copy is Ctrl+C, and paste is Ctrl+V. I have a feeling you will be using that a lot. ;) Anyway, this is a good idea, at least now teams just have to confirm information, rather than start from nothing.
Good Luck!

There's quite a few scouting databases already deployed within FIRST. I'd rather see collaboration between them rather than several different sets of data from each scouting group.

However, I wish you the best of luck. :)

Not to knock a good idea..........
 

Not to knock a good idea......and i'm not saying this in a mean or bad way.......but.........what if due to this years game no one wants to give away there robot design........


now that would be a strange game......

Nothing but failures
 

I really hate to burst your bubble of excitement, but last year, there were so many attempts to set on up. Including myself, but all of them never came popular.

Why?

Because the data wasn't accurate. You will not get every team. And basically, no one cares, until they come to the competition. That is what practice day is all about. You have soooo, soooooooooooo much time, in practice day. Use it to scout other teams. That is when it is the most accurate, and plus it is an un-bias opinion from your own team.

The only thing I liked last year was team Grr's filemaker pro set-up. It was all organized. You can input your own data. You can see it live with a video, have a QTVR object of it, or a 3d MAX animation. It also included a scorer, when and how teams advanced in the ranking. And you can sort them by whatever specifications you put in. For me this is the greatest thing. Bad thing is that you need laptop, which some team don't have.

I actually remember the Motorola team, two years ago had a similar configuration, it was an extremely good, they even provided workstations for you to browse. The only problem with that is that it only featured teams from one regional.

hi
that is definitely a considerable risk. on the other hand, our team and 40 other teams (right now, and we are still growing! ) are willing to take this risk so that a lot of work can get done earlier and scouting is much easier.
all of this is voluntary. if people choose not to disclose thier info, or disclose erroneous info--it is up to them. we have no means of managing this.
finally, we are using this database for other purposes, such as polls, surveys, etc. we are a west coast team, and unfortunately, we have not been included in the east coast databases. this is our way to unite.

Why dont you just post it all on chief delphi
 

I was thinking since CD is the best and most known place on the net for FIRST then why dont you just see if you guys can have a registration on CD. You should also have like a committee from all the good teams like 111 and 47 so that you guys can develop ONE platform for the scouting database. That way you wont be running around with a million different computers and palm pilots. There are many smart people on this board who can help with this. So dont work alone try to unite it will be much easier .

Re: Why dont you just post it all on chief delphi
 

What a good idea :) It's not as formal as you're talking about, but I worked with a few teams last year and hopefully again this year. I'll contact them soon.

Last year was decent for WASH, but this year we'll have more collaboration, and hopefully more teams.

Mike

Scouting Databases
 

As a newer (this is my second year) mentor to FIRST and a former athletic coach of 10 years I have the following comments about scouting databases:

1. These efforts are noble and all that are trying to share honest information are to be commended an praised as it is evidence of noble competitors. However, this may not be the best use of resources.

2. ANY such database is at the mercy of those who provide information. Even those who are trying to be honest may be overly optimistic or pessimistic.

3. Having coached high school students for more than a decade, I have never put much stock in scouting reports from home field practice sessions. (All of my teams were champions when we were the only ones on the field). I've coached basketball, football, baseball, and now robotics. In all instances what a team can do on "game day" is the only truly important information. Things change when the lights go on, uniforms are worn and crowds cheer.

4. Some teams perform better in the clutch than others. Some exceed expectations. Some allow pressure to lead to panic. Some are better at collaborative strategies than others. Some allow egos to override alliance building. No one knows any of this before it is witnessed on site at competitions. Information about robots alone, without knowing about these essential performance and interpersonal skills, is inaccurate. Let's not forget that ANY machine will only perform as well as the humans who control it.

5. Thus, in my humble opinion, utilizing your resources to prepare for on site competition scouting during practice and regular rounds would be more valuable then collecting a HUGE amount of information that may or may not be accurate even if the team is truly trying to disclose a plethera of accurate information.

6. Rather than scouting databases, sharing methods for on site scouting is, perhaps, a more important endeavor. In addition, we should share more info about collaboration and alliance builing techniques - you know - PEOPLE skills. Lastly, let's understand how hard the job of the drive team is. These few are the ones scrutinized for the work of up to 100 people in some cases. Seeing some become mad and frustrated with drivers is LUDICROUS. Let's use our efforts to learn more about proper treatment of people so we allow them to feel comfortable enough to perform at their best. Who's up for creating that database?

Rich Kressly, Advisor
103
www.cybersonics.org

I like the way you think
 

Statements like this make me realize how poor of a job I did last year telling people about Wildstang's database. Ever since our rookie year in 96 we scouted teams by watching them during matches and recording the data with pen & paper. Last year, we had extra software guys sitting idle (me) so we created a better way to gather, store, & retrieve data. We had 4 scouts watching each match (1 per robot) who entered data into Palms/Visors. We then uploaded the palm data into our central WASH database and distributed it to all the teams that helped us scout. It worked out pretty well. Plus it gave the software guys something to do while waiting for the behind schedule robot.

If you want to help us out this year (any & all help is appreciated), send me an email.

Mike

Couple of important notes
 

First of all, I would like to thank those of you who spend so much effort into developing scouting database. Because of all your experience from the past years, I really believe we can come up with something great this year. You are the ones who've seen what's been done and what not to do. Hopefully we can have a more combined effort this year to make something amazing happen.

Here is what we should think about:

I think we should look at what kind of information we want. Obliviously, there are two categories: pre-competition and in-competition. As for the details, we will have to wait till the game come out.

Second, we should think about how are we going to use the information. Think about who's going to look at this data and make sense of it, and how it is going to help that person. Are those people going to use this to plan a game before it start? Or is it going to help them choose partners?

Third, come up with ideas about how to contact teams about this. Or in another words, promote this "scouting database" to people who don't know anything about it? We have got a lot of big names already, such as SOAP/WASH and GMCIA... I suggest take advantage of that.

Forth, come to some sort of agreement and decide how close we should work together. Obliviously we can't have everyone agree on everything. But is that really necessary? We aren't forming a team and forced to do this together. Chances are, we are going to do this database at our own regional. We should work together so that there won't be too many databases out there to cause confusion for others. If we are able to form a few main ones around different regions, we can get a lot of teams to submit their info to one of the database... Let's work together, not against each other.

Finally, we have to realize this isn't a competition to show which one of us is the best in this. We all have been through this, and realized how much works it take to make this happen... I really hope this will really become a group effort, not just many one-person teams out there burning out.

I suggest we have a scouting database forum in here beside from the existing ones. That way we can really concentrate our discussion in there and prevent any off topic discussion in there.

Re: I like the way you think
 

Unfortunately Motorola's email system rejects email from the CD forums (spam? ;) ), and because of spam, I don't want to post my email address directly. So if you want to contact me, send me a PM and I'll give you my email address.

Mike

I think the best thing we could have is one centralized database with as much info as you could possibly imagine on each of the teams. For example, we could have all the team information (team name, team #, sponsors, loaction, robot pics, # of years in existance, etc.), and the competition stats, which would include the point totals for every match they participated in and any other information you can think of (like rank, awards, # of regionals attended, etc.) Then the database could spit out tons of statistics on a team's performance. The database could even take into account things like if you competed against an extremely good team which gave you a really low score that screwed up your average.

Didn't Joe Johnson come up with some sort of "index" number to reflect how a team performed, factoring into account teams that dragged the average down?

In any case, I think that rallying behind a database like SOAP or GMCIA and supplying them with information would be more helpful to the teams in general.

As for accuracy, some things are objective and some are subjective. At least have the objective things (scores, rankings, pairings) available via the database, and if anyone feels like tackling subjective things (robot speed, manueverability), let them have at it.

as the initiator of this discussion, i would like to add the following info:
1. WHS Robotics team is working with SOAP and WASH on this database (this way we will have both the East and West coasts covered)
2. not only will we ask for each team's info regarding their robot, but also their sponsor info, the number of members they have and so on
3. expect to receive 2 emails during the 6 weeks; one will ask all the questions and the second confirm all the info
4. everyone who is concerned about accuracy and validity and usefulness of the database must consider this: while we will never know how well the robot performs in actuality (we wont know until the actual match), we will at least know what it is DESIGNED to do (recall that this was imperative in the last competition---whether the robot was a wedge or could pick up balls); this will make scouting so much easier!!!

thanks for your responses!

I think that any central database that is formed should include data from the team itself, as well as at least one objective report from another team. This way, people can get both a report of what the robot is theoretically capable of doing, as well as what it has already done.

It would be best to have teams doing these reports at every regional. After all, multiple reports are a good thing, and it saves time down in Florida and later regionals when you already have 80% of teams recorded once. You don't want to get stuck photographing (and scouting) EVERY robot at Nats. (trust me, I know, I spent a good few hours taking pictures in 2001)

If everyone works together on this, it means more fun and less scouting for everyone.

what you see is what they did
 

All-

Please don't forget one of the highlights of SOAP's scouting efforts - digitally recording & archiving the matches. Text data goes only so far (especially subjective data) and that's understandable. Of course the cameraman isn't focused on just one robot and doesn't get too many close-ups, but being able to do 'instant replay' and see how a team performed is priceless. If nothing else, a study of both data and video on a group of teams should indicate to you who are the stronger/weaker teams in that group. Then (hopefully) this will aid in producing a winning or high scoring strategy.

The last 2 years 108 has digitized KSC, Chicago, and EPCOT and plans likewise in 2002. Support from 111 and 74 yields coverage of W. MI and GLR. Tom S. from 177 has offered to help record at the UTC Regional if he can pull together a few more resources. We'd like to add one of the California events to the mix. Would someone like to volunteer their team's support?

Later,
KA - 108

I can't speak officially as I'm not part of the Strategy Team, (which is in charge of scouting). But I know we scouted for one of the data bases last year and this year we will have more people available. So we should be able to help cover the LA and San Jose regionals.

Sean330 on this forum would probably be a good initial contact.

We (Team 201) might be able to do some video for you. We have a digital still camera and a digital video camera that we could use for that. I am not sure what regionals we'll be attending (due to travel restrictions). The only one I know we are attending is the Ohio regional. When I learn of the others, I will let you know.

thank you all!
 

Hey! I'm Steph from WHS robotics and just felt like adding in a quick note. Thank you all sooooooooo much for all your fantastic comments, suggestions, and offers of support. (BTW, good work Yanika!) Hopefully we can all work together and pull this off!