"Best" Pit Scouting Questions

[pabeekm]

This thread is in honor of all those impressively irrelevant or hilariously phrased pit scouting questions we've heard at competition. Please post any you've heard or would love to ask. Have fun with this!

Examples:
"How many linear feet of zip ties are on your robot?"
"Is it boy or a girl?"
"If you were to compare your robot to an unladen swallow, would it be African or European?"


Props to my teammate Chase for coming up with the idea for this thread.

[FrankJ]

What is the weight of your code?

How many bits do you use?

How many wheels is your mechanum drive?

[Whippet]

"On a scale of 1 to 10, how good do your bumpers look?"

[xXhunter47Xx]

not really a "best" question, but rather a little embarrassing.
Them: "Did you use Windriver or Netbeans for coding?"
Me: "We used Labview"
Them: "...oh"

[ehfeinberg]

Originally Posted by Whippet

"On a scale of 1 to 10, how good do your bumpers look?"

This is a serious question... We have it on our pit scouting question sheet.

[joelg236]

Originally Posted by ehfeinberg

This is a serious question... We have it on our pit scouting question sheet.

I hope you don't ask them. haha

[SoftwareBug2.0]

Originally Posted by Whippet

"On a scale of 1 to 10, how good do your bumpers look?"

I enjoy some of the "stupid" questions. For example, the only correct answer for that one is "11". Similarly, someone from a different team came and asked me how many seconds ago our drive team had left the pit. My answer was 347 and a half. He said ok, took about two steps and then stopped as he realized what had happened.

Similarly, I love the questions that you can answer factually but you know that when you do it's going to screw up their data processing. For example, there's lots of non-exhaustive multiple choice: "does your robot use traction wheels or mecanum?" For us the correct answer is "no". Similarly, I like questions where the answers might become skewed so much that the average won't mean anything. If you ask how far robots can shoot you'll get one robot like ours that will go like 100 feet, and if you average that with a bunch of other robots that shoot between 10 and 20 feet your average will end up being above the distance that all but one of the robots shoot.

[ehfeinberg]

Originally Posted by joelg236

I hope you don't ask them. haha

Oh true. Sorry, I misread the OP's question.

[Duncan Macdonald]

"How many wheels are on your robot?"
"7"

Shooter wheels are wheels too

[mrnoble]

Originally Posted by Duncan Macdonald

"How many wheels are on your robot?"
"7"

Shooter wheels are wheels too

Then, 14?

[Keegbot]

"On a scale from 1 to 10, how much aloha does your team show?"

[mrnoble]

"What's the most points your robot can possibly score?"

I've always loved to see how my students answer that one.

[GBK]

Before bag day we were at a local practice field playing catch with another teams robot. We tossed the ball back and forth across the truss, catching it. and throwing it back. With our permission the team used one of these volleys in their revile video. This weekend at a competition one of their students doing pit scouting asked us several questions. His last question was: If we threw a ball over the truss do you think your robot could catch it. I just smiled and asked him if he had seen their revile video.

[Christopher149]

How many motors are on your robot?

Same with the wheels, I think the intent was in the drivetrain. I think it was for last year, so ... 10?

What type of drivetrain do you have?
-mecanum
How many wheels do you have?
-um, four??

Well, unless you have some other multiple of 4, I guess.

How fast does your robot go?

Now, this is a serious question, but it goes anywhere from "I don't know", "pretty fast", to making up a number since we haven't measured it.

[nlj007]

"What is the gear ratio of your drivetrain?"
Our answer
"Umm something like a Million to One..."
*scouter writes down our answer*