How to Scout Recycle Rush?

[tindleroot]

Originally Posted by magnets

My advice comes from my experience on a team with only two scouts, so it may not be super applicable.

A super rigidly structured scouting sheet isn't always the way to go.

Information like "Robot was an amazing stacker once they managed to get an RC in the robot" or "Robot has a tipping problem when carrying six stacks, but seems okay when carrying less weight", or "Robot isn't controllable and would knock over stacks if the field was more crowded" are really nice to have.

We also have an abilities section where each robot receives a score based on its ability to do things like cap a stack, do a two ball autonomous, pick up totes from landfill, etc.

A blank means that the scouts were unsure if the robot could perform the action or if the robot did not demonstrate the action.
0 means the team's robot cannot do it because it wasn't designed to.
1 means the team's robot is designed to do it, but is ineffective and has a zero or very low success rate.
2 means the team can do it, but is not particularly quick or reliable
3 means the team can do it well, but not perfectly
4 means the team can do it amazingly well and is one of the best at this.

I feel that if you have the resources (i.e. manpower), this may not be the best way to go if you want to get the highest quality scouting data, since all of it is subjective. Student A may rate team 9000 higher than 9001 in a certain category while Student B is mistaken on the criteria and rates 9001 higher than 9000. Which one is right?

Objective scouting data is surprisingly informative and has fewer inconsistencies than subjective data. After all, it is hard to mess up counting the height of a stack that a team made, but it is pretty easy to mess up judging how stable a team's stack is, or how efficiently they made said stack. There is no need to rate efficiency subjectively if you just look at the # of totes stacked in a match, etc.

A good scouting system will use both objective and subjective data in order to get the "whole scoop" on a team, but objective data should be used to compare every single team in the same way (i.e. # of totes, # of stacks, landfill feeding vs. human feeding), while subjective data is used to detect anomalies (i.e. team "9000" can stack totes with one robot while a tethered robot carries the stack to score )

Sorry this got a bit long...