Quote:
Originally Posted by ThePancakeMan
Team 2338 takes scouting very seriously and in order to describe how we get to making a pick list I have to describe our scouting team. This year we divided scouting into 2 sections , quantitative and qualitative. For quantitative scouting our programming team had developed an android app called "FRC Gear Scout". We had pre programmed every match into it and every person on the team with an android device would therefore scout a single robot per match in order to cover 100% of the data. This was to get individual stats for robots. We also have a qualitative team which works on how well a robot would compliment ours. We end up getting on average about a paragraph on the positives and negatives of each robot. This is all then compiled onto a spread sheet designed and maintained by our electrical team captain. We also have a member of the team go around and do pit scouting with general questions about hidden features of their robot and basic features of their robots as well as weight. We then get drive team and scouting team together and discuss what we want in a robot then we look through the list for first picks. Then we try to make a list of second pick about ... 20 picks for the second tier list. After this we work on scenarios for other alliances we might be going against. We discuss a solution to every problem that could come up and we try our best to have a thought of every possible situation to eliminate any surprises. Also a big part of our scouting is the alumni that come back and help out. Their experience in first is very beneficial to the team.
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A few other things:
1) we make multiple second-pick lists. The list we used is based on our first pick. For example, at Midwest we had lists for "landfill short stackers" and "can uprighters." We went with a can uprighter because 1756, our first pick, tipped over the cans in auto, and we needed upright ones. In the event we had been with a bot that didn't tip the auto cans (i.e. 16), we would have gotten a short stacker.
2) we plan on adding a system into our scouting which sorts teams by average points contribution. This will allow us to make our meetings more organized.
3) qualitative scouting can range from what a robot does in a match to how they would work with us. often times, these notes allow us to quickly assemble the DNP before the meeting even starts.
4) we use a combination of Excel, Access, and Tableau. Each has its own advantages.