[cbolin]

Hi,
Is it possible to collect TOO much information about robots and their teams?

Scouting
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Consider all of the variables associated with six robots, six drivers, six assistant drivers, six coaches and six human players. The interactions during dozens and dozens of pre-qualifying matches.... Luck, bad luck, good ref calls, bad ref calls...you end up with literally thousands of pieces of information.

Analysis
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Someone, or several people, or a computer program using some algorithm, with a little bit of 'fuzzy logic', must crunch all of this data to yield important information about game play and team selection for the finals.

Strategy
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Someone, or several people, decide how you will play the next match. This often involves meeting with your two alliances teams to decide who will do what (if everyone is cooperative). Perhaps your conclusion is different then the conclusion of one of your alliance partners.

Whew!!

Assessing Results
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Do you go back after a competition, sift through all of that data, your concluding strategies and determine what information was really relevant? Was it really necessary to collect all of that information? I know it looks impressive but was it really important?

Conclusion
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We walked down this path this year at two regionals. We have narrowed our scouting information to just two averaged variables that our drive team captain needs to know about our alliance partners and opponents to direct our team during those two-minutes of game play.

Have you applied any 'data reduction' processes after a regional to determine what was truly important?

Regards,
ChuckB