How does your team scout?

[stundt1]

Im kind of new to scouting at competitions and I was wondering how does your team scout?
thanks, Steve

[Duke461]

This isn't my team but they have a fantastic scouting system:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...t=cheesy+scout

[stundt1]

This would be great but what would you do with no internet? Also how does your team determine how you pick your alliance list?

[IKE]

How we used to scout:
1 very experienced scouting mentor watched all the matches. He had a match schedule and listed teams we played with and againts, and the matches they were in before ours. Before each match, he would assemble his notes on a card that went to our coach to prep them for their next match. Friday night we would discuss what we saw and put together a pick list. This works pretty well if you only have enough help to have 1 dedicated scout. The coach will have good match info, and you will have enough info to make a reasonable pick list (every team needs a pick list 1-24). Every team needs to make a pick list Friday night even if you are not in the top 8, because you may get picked by a team that does not have a pick list.

In 2009, the Human player was extremely important. Since we are a team of 30, we had enough students to take stats on the human players. 6 students watched the 6 HPs and 1 student collected and assembled the data. This worked very well, and engaged the students that normally just cheered.

In 2010, we took it a step further. Inspired by teams that did a much better job scouting and thus better finds in their pick-list, we had a scout watch each robot. We had simple to fill out forms that we improved throughout the season. There is a copy of it in the white papers. Students took turns scouting robots, and 2 master scouts prepped the sheets before and after each match. Every team had a sheet with data on 6 of their matches. We also still had the scouting mentor taking notes and preparing match cards. This system was extremely accurate, and was a huge help towards preparing match strategy as last year's ranking system was finding just the right balance to win the match while making sure your opponents continued to score.

For 2011, we are continuing this system. After 1 event, I would say it is working really well. The minibot thing has added a new section to our scouting. Because hanging tubes and deploying minibots are so difficult, we found that our data was less conclusive after around the top 16 teams (of a 40 team district) than it was in 2010. Mostly because there is really only room for 2 robots at the rack, and with teams throwing tubes, finding value for the third partner is a bit tougher than in 2010 where the third had its role in the match.

General notes:
We like paper. We tried electronic databases in the past, but between batteries, people forgetting to save, and expensive laptops going missing... Paper and clipboards work well. Plus you can stand and take notes much easier than typing into a laptop. The 1 team 1 sheet thing is really nice for sorting Friday night to make a pick list. This system requires a minimum of 6-7 students. Ideally you want about 2x that many so that people can substitute in and out. For big teams (20+ students) this is a great way to engage students and have them critically watching the robots. This will pay major dividends during next seasons strategy sessions after game anouncement. The more matches you watch, the more you understand what is possible, what is likely doable, what the talent spread will look like. You will also cringed a little harder every time you read the word PENALTY when going through the game manual.

[Waffles]

This is a quick run down of how 1511 does scouting from Pit to actual performance and alliance selections:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...83#post1015483

(Kims Robot post)

[ghostmachine360]

We've done personal scouting for the past couple years at the Peachtree Regional, with a computer-based scouting network recording match statistics, scores, video footage of the individual robots, and a myriad of pictures for each robot. Can't have enough data on the competition.

This year, in addition to making our own scouting system, we're working with teams 2974 (Team WALT), 1311 (Kell Robotics), & 2655 (Flying Platypi) on a online scouting database for participants of the Peachtree Regional. Not overly in-depth, but good enough to give a base of knowledge to the teams attending.

[DonRotolo]

I've been wanting to describe 1676's system for a while, here's a first poke at that since I remember the details from 2 days ago.

We have at least 6 students scouting per match, each assigned to a team. They use laptops running a custom app feeding a database to keep track of everything the team does. Data accuracy is emphasized. We scout Thursday practice matches as well. This is our quantitative data, which we always offer to every team at the regional with no strings attached.

We have at least one (often 2) super-scout per match as well, they scout all 6 teams for qualitative aspects - what did they try at but fail (which wouldn't be caught by the quantitative folks), and subjective impressions. Including their behavior.

Pit scouting factual data,
Video of every match from way up high (including Thurs),
And one ring to rule them all - a coordinator to keep things running smoothly.

On Friday night, we use various combinations of what we know to rank teams into Yes/Maybe/No categories for First Pick, then we review teams for potential Second Picks.

For example, some of the factors we looked at this year (in no particular order):
Team ranking from FRC
Raw score from hung tubes
Number of logos
Number of minibots successfully deployed
Ubertubes hung
Subjective rankings of super scouts
Basic capabilities - what you do best
How consistent are you - was the minibot a fluke or can you do it almost every match.

Lastly, we look at our strategies and describe what ideal alliance partners would look like for each strategy. Last year, one such strategy was to have a good reliable hanger, a robot that could score in the home zone (even a pusher was OK) and someone who could score in autonomous from the middle. Strategy counts for a lot.

All this put teams into categories. Teams in the top category were watched on video, and a preliminary decision is made. I can safely say that for NJ, we concluded that if we were #1 we would pick 2016 as our first pick (which we did). We had 9 other teams ranked below them for the case where we were not #1, but our hope was to then be picked by 2016, since they were the highest team on our list.

I emphasize our list is based on performance, not friendship or lobbying. For example, team 25 is an awesome team, and they took us to winning NJ last year. This year, their performance was lower than 2016's, and were thus not our first pick. But, as part of the review process, we did note that their averages were depressed by early matches, and by the end of Friday they were driving a winning robot again. So, late performance on Friday counts more than early performance.

Anyway, we then re-hash the data looking for "sleepers", teams which are performing well but didn't appear on our top 10 lists. We found more than one this year.

We watch more match videos, clarifying comments we saw, verifying data, and getting questions to ask teams on Saturday morning. We end up with a list of 25 teams - mostly ranked, some to be ranked after clarifications and further review - which becomes our list.

Some tweaking may be done on Saturday.

So, for relatively new teams, or those inexperienced at scouting for potential alliances, some lessons:
Your actual FRC ranking doesn't matter too much*.
Friday's performance counts the most.
Later matches hold more sway than your first matches.
Consistency is important.
Certain unique capabilities can get you on the list.
Teams played with or against don't matter much, only your team's performance is reviewed.
Team behavior is a factor, not just drive team but anywhere we see someone from your team.

Hope this helps someone out there.


* True story: 1676 was ranked higher than 15 in one game, but never got picked for elims. Some kind teams explained why: we were inconsistent on Friday (but were excellent on Saturday) and did not meet most teams strategies. Had nothing to do with "they don't like us" and all to do with performance.

[stundt1]

Thank you all this has helped me a lot. I cant wait to try some of this at the dc regional. So basically pit scouting is factual and making a mock alliance list on Friday is the best day. So ive seen paper and computer scouting so far. I didn't know teams sent so into scouting. Well Thank you everyone and good luck this year. Also, who is coming to dc with 578 all I know is 1511 from the finger lakes regional.

[DonRotolo]

Good scouting wins matches.

We also use the scouting data we have to set up a strategy for qualification matches. The idea is to figure out a strategy with your alliance partners to defeat the opposing alliance, since more wins = higher rank. We were #1 seed at NJ yesterday, so I guess it works.

[reversed_rocker]

you might want to check out the FIRST Scouting Alliance (FSA) that way you can have access to anyone's match data from previous events as well as nicely defined scouting sheets, oogles of statistics, strategy matching, and it even attempts to give you a win percentage based on the competing strategies and stats of the robots attempting those strategies.

https://sites.google.com/site/1stscoutingalliance/home

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by reversed_rocker

you might want to check out the FIRST Scouting Alliance (FSA) that way you can have access to anyone's match data from previous events as well as nicely defined scouting sheets, oogles of statistics, strategy matching, and it even attempts to give you a win percentage based on the competing strategies and stats of the robots attempting those strategies.

https://sites.google.com/site/1stscoutingalliance/home

I've seen this site linked a couple of times, but I can't seem to find anything for this year. Am I just looking at the wrong places?

[stundt1]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

Good scouting wins matches.

We also use the scouting data we have to set up a strategy for qualification matches. The idea is to figure out a strategy with your alliance partners to defeat the opposing alliance, since more wins = higher rank. We were #1 seed at NJ yesterday, so I guess it works.

Wow nice seed 1 how did you do?

[Katie_UPS]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

I've seen this site linked a couple of times, but I can't seem to find anything for this year. Am I just looking at the wrong places?

I'm pretty sure that Danny (the founder) has just been slow on the update. If you have questions, I suggest emailing him. I'm 99% sure that you can find his contact information on the site.

[Xaviermw191]

My view is that your scouting data, list and rankings, has to be adaptable for the representative for alliance selections, you cannot simply hand the rep. a list of just team numbers in order of which you want to pick. If you do this, then the coach cannot properly help choose an alliance that works together and covers each others weaknesses.

I know at FLR this year (yesterday haha), my team (191) was the third alliance captain and I choose 229 with our first pick. Now 229 had been absolutely stellar at hanging tubes, easily top 5 in the qualification rounds, but were unable to successfully deploy a mini-bot during qualification rounds. We knew that with our 2nd. pick we had to pick a team with a successful mini-bot. Now if I had been up there with just a list of teams ranked, by that 14th pick, I would have been largely clueless as to which teams had had a successful mini-bot, especially because there were only around 15 teams to do a mini-bot successfully, and most of them would have been scooped up by the time we were to pick. However, my scout had given me a descriptor of each of the top teams and from that, I was able to identify 3173 as a successful mini-bot team that would compliment our alliance.

Going into alliance selections, we were unsure of what was going to happen, whether we were going to be chosen, who would be picked before us, etc. Once the scenario came about and had us picking 229, it greatly benefited us with the ability to find our next pick not only as a good robot, but additionally as a robot that complimented our alliance.

When scouting for alliance selection, it is key to be able to not just give the representative a ranking, but to also give the representative the information they need to make an alliance that fully complements each others abilities.

[stundt1]

nice job at the flr 191 too bad some of your alliances robots didn't work the last match.