Scouting in a nutshell?
 

This will be my second season as subteam lead of Scouting. I always manage to get myself into a situation where I have to try and explain who we are and what we do. Does anyone have any effective ways to do that? I'm no good, and, honestly, it bugs me.

Re: Scouting in a nutshell?
 

The way I like to explain it to people is as follows:

Scouting is the important practice of observing and recording data on other robots in a competition to learn of their strengths and shortcomings. That information is then used to aid the drive team in entering a match well informed about their partners and opponents. It is also compiled into lists and other formats to aid our alliance in selecting partners for the elimination round.

Re: Scouting in a nutshell?
 

I'd define it as "Collecting useful performance and team cooperation data on other teams and robots in order to assist the drive team in both strategy selection and picking teams during alliance selection"

IMO, the exact definition can depend on your scouting system, but in a nutshell, you collect data to assist the drive team.

Re: Scouting in a nutshell?
 

I always try to make friends with other teams when scouting. You are a salesperson, but no one likes to feel like they are at a used car lot. When I talk to teams I try to ask what area the person I am talking to works with on the robot. Then I try to share some of our problems that are specific to the area they are interested in. Every C++ coder will share your pain of the mystery segfault, and a conversation of programing troubles I find makes a nice segway into what your final code does. The same I find is true for mechanical people, electrical. My thought process is that teams like to work with teams that they feel like they are friends with.
When choosing alliances, I always like teams that give us slips of paper with pictures. It makes it easier to remember which robot was theres when interviewing the scouter's about what they saw on the field.
To prep for choosing teams, I always try to get all of the students to take alot of pictures and notes. It is alot easier to comeback to what you thought about or saw if you have a note to that effect.
I would also try to include your drivers. Other drivers on other alliances will push for drivers that they have played with before and were impressed by their professionalism and skills. And drivers always love regular notes on what teams they are going up against. Regular notes also help you practice going through your data.

I hope any of these tips are what you were looking for

Re: Scouting in a nutshell?
 

Here is what you do:

You ask your consumers what they want to know; and then you go get that information for them.

The devil can be in the details, but the fundamental concept is pretty simple.

Blake

Re: Scouting in a nutshell?
 

It sounds like you may need to define what your scouting teams goals are and then work towards establishing a "Scouting Team Manual" and training presentations. Scouting means different things to different teams, be sure to talk with your mentors and drivers about what they want/need.

As others have suggested, look through the whitepapers and other threads. A good presentation to check out would be FRC1114 strategy presentation on this site: http://www.simbotics.org/resources/workshops

FRC2168 recently put together a draft scouting manual for our students, to take a look at it click on my name in my signiture and scroll find the posted document.

Myself and another mentor from our team just held a presentation on scouting at CTFIRST University, they are now also posted on my blog. If you are interested in reviewing the slides, send me a PM or a email and I'll get them sent over to you.

Re: Scouting in a nutshell?
 

Each game requires different strategies. Your job is to identify the strategies and appropriate statistics to represent successful use of the strategy. Then you provide that information for your robot and obtain that information for others.

So lets take Logo Motion. It was critical to be able to pickup off of the floor. It was important to know what rows you could easily place the tubes on. If you had an automation and your percentage of placement during automation. If you had a minibot, your percentage of attachment to the tower, and your speed up the tower. Other concepts were also possible.

So knowing those things, I'd mass produce a statistics note card for my robot and a check sheet for the other team's robot.

I hope that's helpful...

Re: Scouting in a nutshell?
 

This is a very good idea (in my opinion). A good well designed scouting form can be very effective for data collection. If you need reference forms, here's a link to our two scouting forums (during a match and circulating around the pits):

• Match Form
• Pit Form

Re: Scouting in a nutshell?
 

Scouting is not only finding out who the best teams are at the competition but also finding teams that will compliment your playing style. For example, this year the Bees looked for a third team that was able to defend and had a (at least somewhat) reliable minibot or could feed us and the other main scorer (provided we were one of the top two scorers). This prevented the rack from being crowded by three high-scoring teams.

Strategy is the biggest factor in determining who we pick after scouting.

Re: Scouting in a nutshell?
 

Scouting to your team is like "intelligence" is to an army. Scouting gathers "actionable" data which can be used for match play and alliance selection.

Scouting is similar to taking stats for a sports team. It is easy to remember who scored the touchdowns, but it is often more important who made the good blocks, tackles, and covered all the holes.

Scouting is what makes competing teams competitive.

Re: Scouting in a nutshell?
 

Hi, new 2nd year rookie mentor here.

in my opinion, the goal of scouting in context of FRC cant be adequately discussed without first explaining the whole Regional Competition 2 day schedule: qualifying rounds, elimination tournament and most crucially important is the alliance selection process which seems pretty unique to FIRST.

you arent just scouting to see how your fellow or opponent alliance is stacked before a particular match, but trying to make the best alliance and fully knowing your options before going in, which is obviously to anyone experienced to FRC is never just the team rankings after qualifications. To the point that you could almost predict the alliances.... or map out a few likely scenarios.

keeping track of all the teams, not just the top 24, is essential. its easy to remember the top teams at a regional, but its harder to remember those teams that also are reliable, move well, and can serve as a good 3rd pick. its also good to know who simply is NOT a good 3rd (or 2nd) pick, regardless of rank, for whatever reason. its even more essential at championships where you are matched among a random national selection of teams you probably arent familiar with at all.

for me last year, it took 2 regionals in order for me to hone a good 1-man scout sheet which i carried into championships. it didnt require me to see every match (thankfully). and it was based more on qualitative measures, not completely objective results. it also had important side notes. also, importantly, it had a small hand sketch of each robot, which was amazingly helpful, not just to remember which number bot was which at a glance, but gave a brief idea of the TYPE of bot, like what kind of arm or grabber or wheels. its all rather low tech way of doing it with pen n paper on a clipboard, but less man power compared to our teams computerized i-scout methods, but it also makes for easier talking points when doing the Friday night scout report, which is the best time to discuss the scouting data.

Re: Scouting in a nutshell?
 

For newer folks however, you need to know that this is only 1/3 (maybe 1/4...) of the picture. And the last third at that. If you aren't in the say top 15, the above is irrelevant. You won't get to pick anyone... So, You've got to get to the top 15 and you do that with the rest of scouting.

Working backwards: The second third is understanding the balance of forces in any given match. Think football here. Given the players on the other side of the field, what plays are they likely to try to run? What are the best your alliance's best plays? What are your best counters to their plays and what are they likely to counter your plays with. You need to walk into each match fully cognoscente of what to watch for and what to do about it.

Just to add to what someone else said. You can't depend on the other team to correctly evaluate themselves. In a perfect world, I'd have 6 scouts at each match. (1 per team) Looking for what they did well. What they failed to see. Suggesting possible alternatives to their attacks and counters.

So in the second 1/3, I talked about plays. The first 1/3 of scouting actually happens before the regional. Your scouts need to be those who understand most thoroughly what is possible out there on the field. Therefore, they are in the best position to have input on designing plays and counters. They also need to work with the drivers, the strategists, and the coaches to establish near perfect communication. And that all has to happen long before the first match. (In a Perfect World... Oh yeah, never seen one.)

HTH, ::rtm:: :eek:

Re: Scouting in a nutshell?
 

Reported.

Re: Scouting in a nutshell?
 

Well, since this thread is active again I figure I'll plug it a little bit.

EWCP will be doing a cast about scouting featuring a few familiar faces from 33 next Sunday (10-30-11) at 9pm EST. I'll post an outline as soon as I get around to making it. If you have any questions you REALLY want answered send me a message.

Re: Scouting in a nutshell?
 

That's not completely true. Even though we weren't in the top 15, in Minnesota last year, we were still picked and made it to the quarter finals. If the other teams are scouting properly, you should still be in the game!

Re: Scouting in a nutshell?
 

Scouting is incredibly useful outside of alliance selection. That's just its most obvious application.