[phrontist]

I've been hunting around CD lately and much to my suprise, it seems every team is using a different scouting system. There are of course a few who seem to be sharing sytems (I think Wheeler-High at VCU was) but shouldn't we have a standard for this kind of thing? This way programmers would not be reinventing the wheel and it would make sharing a breeze.

Now then, I must admit I am part of a rookie team and I don't fully understand the requirements of such a scouting system. But a few obvious things come to mind:

1) The ability to distinguish between contributers of scouting info.

2) Every year a new sub-specification would have to come out definining robot judging categories. For instance, it makes no sense to retain a category for hanging capability if it's not a factor in a certain year...

3) It should be painless to merge scouting data from many, many, teams. (Hey! Wouldn't it be cool if we had a big centralized national website! Mmmmm... data)

I'd really like to see is a standardized file format (XML?) that all programmers can adhere to, and we can all live in magnificent harmony exchanging info on robots/teams across the land.

Please, any and all suggestions welcome. If this appears to be a popular idea, I'd love to help implement it.