Quote:
Originally Posted by artK
Why not just not get data points that you can't verify in the pit? It saves time and reduces the amount of noise in your data.
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That's kind of the point of the "detector". If you aren't at least looking in the pits, it's kind of odd... but it's not that hard to find a team that is using favorable numbers when you do.
For example, let's say your pit scouts talk to a team about their stacking. And they say that they can do two 6-stacks, uncapped. Sounds reasonable, right? I can see teams going for that this year. But what YOU don't know--necessarily--is that that's their design/non-interference/non-spec (and, in non--RR games, non-defense) field number. The real number, as your scouts find by observation, is that they're actually doing 1 6 stack, or maybe 3 3-stacks, or one 4-stack and one 2-stack.
Basically, it's not the data points that you can't verify that you get from the pit that are the problem--most teams can verify anything they get from the pit scouts. It's that many teams will be optimistic--I don't accuse them of lying outright--but this is a physics problem. (Read: Equations (gameplay) work out nicely in the theoretical frictionless vacuum world, not quite so well in reality.) Then the verification shows that optimism to be misplaced.
My opinion on pit scouting is actually a bit different than most people's. My personal opinion is that it's NOT about the robot when you're scouting in the pit. The only thing you do with the robot is to take a picture (remind the field scouts what this robot looks like), and maybe note what work is being done. The TEAM is far more important, in terms of getting to know them. Let the match scouts collect the data on whether the team works on the field: if two teams work well together and are good friends, and both have decent robots, look out in eliminations if they're on the same alliance.
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Past teams:
2003-2007: FRC0330 BeachBots
2008: FRC1135 Shmoebotics
2012: FRC4046 Schroedinger's Dragons
"Rockets are tricky..."--Elon Musk
