The key to scouting is determine what you think of the robot and not believe anything that the owner of the robot is telling you. It is human nature for a person to believe that they have a good robot. After all we all spend six weeks on our bots and no matter how miserable the performance is they still believe they have a good "bot," Here is how my team proceeded to work scouting for the past year. I will give this process to you on a day by day process. There were two separate methods that my team used I will give one for teams of a relative size and one of a team of six!!! Yes six people is all we needed to scout the UTC Regional and we finished second and were amongst the top 8 throughout the qualification rounds until the last match.
Thursday: arrive at competition EARLY!!!! Walk around the pit and send team members out with five teams to scout. My team had I believe at the team around 40 plus kids so we had alot of data collected. Also going into the event you should have three-five team members that are known as the strategist. These are the people in charge of making sure the info is right on the sheet and to compile all the information that night onto index cards. I believe we just used works but we made the program. The questions that we asked were what motors were you driving on, speed and etc.
Friday: Qualification rounds begin and here is where some problems with team's scouting begin. See there are many times where team will give a scout a inaccurate report. For they don't want to reveal there strategy quite yet. This happens and lemme tell you its quite prominent amongst teams and I practice it too. I don't want everyone to know what I'm doing unless your with me. And as for the statement: By using WASH we put our name out and get recognized is very false and absurd. Don't get me wrong I love the program however, I would much prefer to see what a robot can do then hear what a robot can do and take my chances. Just because a computer is telling you that a robot is rated a 2 on speed doesn't explain when that same robot beats you to the goals. Getting back to what is suppose to be happening again is you have to prime scouts watching matches and making a list of top bots. Last year there was two catergories Hybrids, and goal-grabbers. Using this list compile a top 10 picks for a draft. Then make another list of five teams that you believe are underated and you can steal in the second round of the draft.
Saturday: Have your scouts watch the matches exclusively for changes on the robot and make sure you get an infirmary report from all the teams that are on your list. This is how the chaos is managed with a large team.
For a team of only six people...(Yah six people including the drivers!!)
Thursday- Divide all the teams by six and begin the interview process before practice rounds start. During practice rounds watch two of there matches and then compile all the teams info into a notecard.
Friday- Drive team and strategist go into pit while two people watch the matches and check info. Once again changes are made to the scouting reports for accuracy. That night compile the list and repeat the process for Saturday by checking on all the teams on your list.
The key to making the six person team work is focus and knowing what to look for.
Lastly, another idea for scouts out there is if you know who you are playing ahead of time watch their previous match. You never know what you will find out from it.
Ok I'm done this post is way too long
