Team 5215 scouting

[FrankenmuthK]

Let me know if there is anything that need to be changed or corrected, feel free to use

http://goo.gl/forms/384418Yzv9

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by FrankenmuthK

Let me know if there is anything that need to be changed or corrected, feel free to use

http://goo.gl/forms/384418Yzv9

The sheet itself looks pretty good. However, I would discourage you in general from detailed pit scouting (especially with subjective rankings), mostly because teams will give you false information, both intentionally and/or unintentionally. Don't ask for information that you can find directly from the field as it relates to their capabilities.

It is good though to check out every robot and find some unique features you may find advantageous to your alliance.

[FrankenmuthK]

Originally Posted by Abhishek R

The sheet itself looks pretty good. However, I would discourage you in general from detailed pit scouting (especially with subjective rankings), mostly because teams will give you false information, both intentionally and/or unintentionally. Don't ask for information you can't find directly from the field as it relates to their capabilities.

It is good though to check out every robot and find some unique features you may find advantageous to your alliance.

Well with the ranking one thats going to be to our scouters judgement

[GKrotkov]

Originally Posted by FrankenmuthK

Well with the ranking one thats going to be to our scouters judgement

Do you intend to train all your scouts to the point where they all give rankings consistent with both themselves and others, without being influenced at all by the sales ability of the people they're talking to? I know that over the course of an event, I certainly develop my opinions and biases - and that would take a lot of effort of deal with. If you have the people and time for that training, that's all well and good. If not, you may want to change your system a bit.

On a more practical note: If you print out the google form as it is, it winds up being 3 sheets of paper. If you can, I'd suggest formatting it to fit onto a single sheet of paper. This will mean fewer papers flying around at competitions.

Also, I'd second Abhishek's point about the unreliability of pit scouting. It's useful in the first few rounds, because your match scouting won't have quite enough data yet. However, as matches move on, it quickly degrades in value.

[FrankenmuthK]

Originally Posted by GKrotkov

Do you intend to train all your scouts to the point where they all give rankings consistent with both themselves and others, without being influenced at all by the sales ability of the people they're talking to? I know that over the course of an event, I certainly develop my opinions and biases - and that would take a lot of effort of deal with. If you have the people and time for that training, that's all well and good. If not, you may want to change your system a bit.

On a more practical note: If you print out the google form as it is, it winds up being 3 sheets of paper. If you can, I'd suggest formatting it to fit onto a single sheet of paper. This will mean fewer papers flying around at competitions.

Also, I'd second Abhishek's point about the unreliability of pit scouting. It's useful in the first few rounds, because your match scouting won't have quite enough data yet. However, as matches move on, it quickly degrades in value.

What would you guys suggest for a game scouting ?

[Skyehawk]

Originally Posted by FrankenmuthK

What would you guys suggest for a game scouting ?

If you are intent on using paper, a spreadsheet set up can be very functional. All your scouters need to do is just make tally marks then total them up at the end of the match. I will have a paper spreadsheet set up for backup, in case we don't get our tablets going.

[Bryce Paputa]

Originally Posted by Skyehawk

If you are intent on using paper, a spreadsheet set up can be very functional. All your scouters need to do is just make tally marks then total them up at the end of the match. I will have a paper spreadsheet set up for backup, in case we don't get our tablets going.

We don't even use a spreadsheet, and it has worked great for us. Each team gets a piece of paper with a row for each match with tally boxes, along with a section for notes. This year we're looking into an electronic system, but I wouldn't be surprised if we stay completely on paper.

[SoftwareBug2.0]

Originally Posted by FrankenmuthK

Let me know if there is anything that need to be changed or corrected, feel free to use

http://goo.gl/forms/384418Yzv9

Since other people have already covered general the problems with asking people what their robot does, here's a critique of the individual items:

Drive system: Many types of other. You may want to consider differentiating between 6wd and swerve for example, or adding a box for a typed in choice. Whole field is much less useful than for most games though.

Feeder bot: What is a feeder bot? And why are tote and bin mutually exclusive?

Can it stack totes/max tote stack: Consider changing yes/no + 1-6 into 0-6.

Can it stack a bin/highest stack for a bin: Same as w/ totes. Additionally, "bin" is ambiguous. Totes are often called bins in everyday speech.

Auto: Seems like need more than the four options. Some of them aren't mutually exclusive, and there's no indication of the number of items moved.

Something that I would add is that you should consider taking pictures or noting something about the appearance that people will recognize it by. That way if people are trying to figure out what team number a robot belongs to they have a way besides wandering around all the pits.

Another general remark I have about pit scouting is that if hand random students a form to do pit scouting some of them will just get focused on answering the exact questions on the form and not really make the best use of the opportunity to talk to other teams about their robots. Talking to people about how their robot works is a great opportunity to meet people and to learn about techniques that might be useful in the future. For example, one year got to talk to someone from 1023 about the interesting multi-step molding process that they used to build their wheels. It also gives you a look at how teams run things differently at the competition.