[Blue_Mist]

Since our team is pretty small and most people stayed at the Pit, I did almost all of the scouting for our team. Before each regional I wrote up scouting sheets that were basically one continuous table, with one copy as the Master that stayed at the Pit, and a few other copies that floated with the scout(s).

Each row was one robot and each column information on said robots. Each row was a different width depending on my speculation of what teams would be scout-worthy, based on past experience: say, 254 would get more space than a rookie. The first column would be team number and name, and then the name our team uses, say Team 192, GRT, we would refer to as Gunn instead, or Team 100 Woodside/Carlmont rather than the Wildhats. The second and third columns were Game Play, with checkboxes for (2nd Column) Auton, Laps and Control, and (3rd Column) Hurdle, Place and Remove. Each category had space after it for notes. The last column was Reliability, and that we left blank, for notes. I printed these out and let pencil and paper work their magic. Each scout I could gather would mark down and note robots and then bring their sheets back to the Master sheet, and that way the Master was always available. Feel free to PM me if you want the actual sheet. (It's a little scary; Silicon Valley and Davis were four months ago but I can put this down directly from memory...)

We never did set up an analysis system, but before each of our matches, I would mentally analyze each robot that we were working with or against and gather the other two robots on our alliance and discuss strategy with all three drive teams.

Pit Scouting was crucial here. I drew each robot in its team number and name space, and in this way was able to keep track of each robot on the field. Some teams take photographs as a parent did on our team, but I found the drawings easier to edit in case a team dramatically changes their robot. I also asked questions all three days, and while the numbers are a usually little inflated, most rapidly deflate when compared to match scores for individual robots.