Scouting Questions

[Ginger Power]

"On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your bumper quality?"... because that's somehow relevant information...

Pit scouting is useful for the things you can't figure out from watching the robot on the field. How mechanisms work and things of that nature. It could also be important this year for robot dimensions - have to make sure all 3 robots can fit while climbing.

If only teams would use pit scouting efficiently...

[Chief Hedgehog]

Or effectively... Ginger Power - we don't agree on much
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[Michael Hill]

I like to collect some information about the drive team, like who their coach is (mentor or student), how much practice time they've had with their drive configuration, etc. Our team always has student coaches, so if our alliance partner's coaches are mentors, we'll send an adult with our team to talk strategy so our student coach doesn't get steamrolled over an adult coach with say...an abrasive personality. We're going to make sure our coach's voice is heard.

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

"On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your bumper quality?"... because that's somehow relevant information...

Pit scouting is useful for the things you can't figure out from watching the robot on the field. How mechanisms work and things of that nature. It could also be important this year for robot dimensions - have to make sure all 3 robots can fit while climbing.

If only teams would use pit scouting efficiently...

Gauging bumper quality is very important; it's strongly correlated with robot performance. But I wouldn't ask a team to rate their own bumper quality..

[George1902]

Some of the responses in this thread more than disappoint me. They disgust me.

If a student approaches your pit with a part they needed machined or a wire they needed soldered, do you ridicule them? Give them false information and send them on their way? Nudge their elbow while they use your band saw?

If a scouter asks a question with an easily-observed answer, I invite them into our pit to take a closer look at the robot. If the pit is too busy at the moment, I invite them to return at a better time.

If a scouter asks a question that seems irrelevant to me, I look for the logic behind the question and answer it as fully as I can.

I train my scouters to introduce themselves and ask for the chance to view the robot. We have a set of desirable data that is infeasible to collect during matches, so that is their focus.

Our scouters are also trained to find teams in need of help. If they have no autonomous, ask if we can send a programmer over to try to get something going. If they are have nothing but a pile of parts and the only mentor who showed up was their teacher (who happens to teach English), can we send over some of our mechanical and electrical people to help out? (true story)

I sincerely hope some of you reassess your outlook in this area. If you feel you are getting useless data, ask better questions and train your scouters better. Scouters are the eyes and ears of your teams.

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

[EricLeifermann]

Originally Posted by George1902

Some of the responses in this thread more than disappoint me. They disgust me.

If a student approaches your pit with a part they needed machined or a wire they needed soldered, do you ridicule them? Give them false information and send them on their way? Nudge their elbow while they use your band saw?

No, and this is a horrible comparison.

We also answer all pit scouting questions honestly and don't give useless info.

However we don't pit scout for many of the reasons posted here.

Originally Posted by George1902

Our scouters are also trained to find teams in need of help. If they have no autonomous, ask if we can send a programmer over to try to get something going. If they are have nothing but a pile of parts and the only mentor who showed up was their teacher (who happens to teach English), can we send over some of our mechanical and electrical people to help out? (true story)

We have a sub team at comps whose sole purpose is to go to teams and ask them if they need help and find ways to provide it. Either through us or another team. We don't need our scouters to do this.

[George1902]

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

We also answer all pit scouting questions honestly and don't give useless info.

I know, Eric. Wave is one of the teams that does this (and so many other things) right. Sadly, a quick read through this thread and others on CD shows that that behavior is not universal.

I will stand by the comparison, though.

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by George1902

Some of the responses in this thread more than disappoint me.

I agree. I don't see a ton of value in pit scouting, but purposefully providing false answer, isn't very good. On a very practical level, if I find the answers provided don't match the truth, I'm totally going to knock you down our pick list. Either you don't know your robot, you're a jerk or you don't take it seriously. I prefer not to compete with and depend on those teams.

[MrJohnston]

I had no idea that so many folks treated scouters like this... Wow.

We do pit scouting for different reasons, depending on the game. This year, we are going to want to know what sort of defenses they "think" they can cross -early in the competition, we will not have much information on this at all. Our scouters will look at wheels and drivetrains... Etc.... When we have seen a robot at a different competition, we'll ask them about upgrades... If the robot struggled with something either a previous week or earlier in the weekend, we'll ask how they are doing with fixing the issue.. We like to get a feel for the personality of a team - we we enjoy working with them in eliminations?

More importantly, however, we often send our younger kids out to pit scout so they can interact with other folks in FIRST, experience Gracious Professionalism, and see how other teams operate - both with robot construction but personal interactions. Commonly, we'll send more introverted students around in pairs as it provides moral support and helps them to learn to engage and interact better with others.

I don't judge what other scouts ask us. Just as we send scouters out for lots of different reasons, we assume other teams do as well. We also recognize that often the information pit scouts bring back is completely secondary to the experience they are getting....

Reading some of the comments above, I understand why some of my kids at Champs last year decided they didn't want to pit scout any more.

[Jarren Harkema]

For those of us who have replied with scenarios of giving false answers. I can only speak for myself, but I don't think the intent was to actually leave it at the false answer. It was more a sarcastic commentary on the questions they are asked sometimes, especially without providing context for the reasons behind the question. To cover my butt, I've never actually done what I posted.

I thought this thread was supposed to be for fun. "I thought it would be fun to make a list of questions you don't like, or unusual ones you have heard."

[marshall]

Our pit scouting questions are pretty comprehensive:

• How many linear feet of zip ties are contained within your robot?
• How bouncy are your bumpers?
• What is the speed of your robot in furlongs per fortnight?
• What do you think of our pants?
• Do you have any mentors named Matt or Nate?

[SM987]

Echoing what other posters have said, asking for a photo and "tell me about your robot" are pretty valuable. Whether intentionally misleading or not, our pit scouts know to take any information obtained via pit scouting with a grain of salt. They are looking for rats nests of wire, things hanging into the drivetrain area, and other issues that might make something hard to repair quickly in a playoff situation.

My personal favorite pit scout question last year was "Are you more of an offense or defense robot?"

[IronicDeadBird]

I'm going to make this pretty clear. I draw a line between pit scouting and networking. I value networking way more then I value pit scouting. This year for pit scouting what I personally need is speed, dimensions, drive base. That's it, I want the information quickly I want it clean and once that's done I want students to network.
"But what do you mean by networking?"
Networking to me is socializing and helping other teams, figuring out how other teams function and learning about what makes teams successful. Serious announcement where a team requests something over a P.A system? I want a scout on that. Sweet dance group going on nearby the field? Lets see if we can scout up a game of ninja or get something fun going on. Six weeks of building and working hard and I want students to enjoy the regional. Last year we had a student because he had free time got to talk to an engineer at Lockheed Martin, considering that he is going into college and enjoying engineering this was far more valuable then any data he could have found in a pit. All sorts of people show up to these competitions and its a wonderful chance for all the students to make connections into the industry they want to pursue upon graduating highschool.

TLR Scouting is important for winning but my personal biggest priority is not that we win a regional, its that the students get the most out of the time they have.