What do you use scouting for?

[Jack]

Ok, this is just a question to teams:

What do you use scouting for?

Team 201 mostly just uses scouting to pick alliance partners if we're in the top 8. We also use the data we've collected to formulate a stragety against our oppotent during a match, but this does not really get used much.

Another way to read this question would be:

How much of the data you collect do you actually use? (25%, 75%, 100%??)

Lastly, if a scouting network was created over this summer (who's developement would be open to all), would your team be willing to use it and submit data to it? Also, how useful do you think data, from a network like this, would be?

Jack

[Pin Man]

you can decide on a strategy against certain teams...

[Powers]

We use scouting mainly to see if we can push the other guy around... we used it a couple of times to see where to put the boxes in hp mode

[Ryan Albright]

Yes there is alot of good uses for strategy. We use it to see if they have ai and if they are against us to plan agaisnt it. Helps us check out are alliance partners to see if we are gonna have to do more work to win or if we have a good alliance partner. and a good stratgey against the other team like who to totally knock out if we need to

[Pin Man]

I spend have the competition scouting...

[Ryan Albright]

we actually have a team that scouts and then when we get are assignments on who we are with, the drivers go out and talk to the the teams they are with and against

[Joel Glidden]

We use scouting primarily to see who we'll be able to push around and how fast their auto is. All I really want to know is how many motors they've got in the drive train and if they've got them geared higher or lower than us. We also like to know before hand if a team has a tendancy to take stacks out arbitrarily. For building our pick list for eliminations we used video more than anything. We must have watched three hours of matches Friday night... *yawn*

-Joel

[Joel J]

We use scouting for.. something. I scout to know what I am up against.

[Soukup]

At midwest, we were paired with alot of rookie teams and they didn't really know much strategy. So our scouting came in use when trying to figure out autonomous modes and and basic functions. We had three or four main guys that did aqlot of work. And we tried to split it up amongst our team, but most of them didn't care, and just made up results and stuff. So at west michigan, we'll have our main scouters, figuring out what other teams do. That way we can pick partners (if in top 8) or we can form strategy against other teams.

[Josh Hambright]

Our team had just used an excel type spreadsheet to organize data (which didn't do much good)

So this year we have been developing an access database to organize it all, but we are learning as we go...

We scouted all but 4 teams in cleveland (thats 60 teams) and all but a few in chicago...

We just used ours to look up info on oponents before matches and also to find out what our allies can do... the section where we recorded what peoples autonomous could do was especialy useful.

If we had ever been in a picking position we would have probably used the scouting to pick alliances also..we had a whole system set up that would rank people based on certain specifics that we could pick... cool stuff...

Our team would LOVE to get involved with some kinda of open source type project for scouting...where everyone works together and developes stuff for it, like software for different platforms and such... Lets do it!

[Kojib]

In my opinion, we have a very nice scouting set-up. Everyone on the team must scout. They are assigned in groups of 4-5 for approx. 1.5 hour shifts. Those not scouting are either free to do as they please, or in the pit. We use the information we gather while scouting (we scout during qualifiying rounds and practice rounds) to accomplish many tasks. First of all, it allows us to see how teams perform rather than what they say they can do. Because of this our alliance is stronger due to the fact that we don't overestimate the performance of our partner. We also have a general idea of how the opposing teams can compete. Both in terms of strategy and robot/driver capabilities. By scouting nearly every round, we are also able to get a more "full" picture of a teams performance, as often drivers will perform better as the competition progresses. Because every match is scouted, every team is scouted several times. Going into the finals, we average every team's performance, giving us a good overall view, rather than "In this match they really excelled, so they must be good all the time" That's about it...

[tonyargote]

As a driver, i go out scouting with my coach and some others. I can tell you, we only use scouting to plan out which autonomous mode program to use, depending on the speed and strength of other robots, otherwise, we adapt our strategy on the field. I don't think anyone actually was able to plan out a whole match by scouting and strategizing. This game is mostly who ever can get the most boxes in automode, and then you move them back and forth to manipulate your score. If you don't ahve a great automode, your probably (no always) at a disadvantage

[jmort03]

we use ours to find info on the robots that are in the upcoming matches mostly, and it also worked very well when we picked 201 at midwest regional, i really didnt get to see their robot but the scouts kept telling me about it, and when it came to pick, i had to pick them, all of my scouting sheets all had good info on 201's robot. Scouting helps alot with the game...it gives a team a heads up on whats to come...

thanks 201, and da bears on being a great alliance partners...
you guys rocked!

[Pin Man]

Scouting makes the competition so much easier

[LongBoardSurfer]

I spend all competition on a laptop doing data entry and we use the info every round to know exactly what to expect.