Pit Scouting Questions?

[BenjiSG]

I run pit scouting on our team. Our operations generally run like this:

On Day 0, I go around to every team's pit and get pictures of their robots. These pictures then get uploaded to a Flickr account (from my phone if the Internet's good enough, otherwise at home that night after the pits close). From there, the pictures get put onto spreadsheets which are printed and used to record pit scouting info, with each being for a different team and having their number and name on the spreadsheet.

On Day 1, I and typically at least one other pit scout divide up the teams and circle around the pits to ask questions. We have separate boxes for robot nickname, distinguishing characteristics, low/high goal shots, defense (against other robots), climbing, each of the various defenses, and goals and defenses in auto. Scouts aren't given a script, but I generally ask questions in the following manner:

• Does your robot have a nickname?
• Which defenses can you do?
• Can you shoot high/low?
• What's your drivetrain like? Are you good at pushing other robots around?
• Can you climb?
• What's your auto like?
• Anything else cool or interesting about your robot?

From there, the forms stay in the pit so that they can be accessible to drive team. As drive team plays matches, they use a separate box to record interactions with their alliances drive teams, plus anything else unique they notice.

When we go to rank teams for desirability, we use the pit scouting forms to see if they potentially have any other valuable skills that they advertised, or if drive team has problems with them, or whether they have abilities which have not been demanded in their matches.

This data usually advises decisions secondarily as a means to cross-reference, but they also serve as excellent look at a team at glance if anyone picks up on something and wants to check over a team's basic skills and robot image.

Your scouting shouldn't rely on data you get from the pit since many teams exaggerate/lie, but it can be a useful addition to your scouting process.

[bennettj800]

here's what my team has generally done:
[Click this link to seeee the sheet im talking about]

It is very specific information, but when asked in the right tones, the feedback is remarkable (yeses and no's are still information, are they not?)

after the first day of pit scouting, we have a lot of down time, so we all (we = scouts) go around the pits and write down one interesting feature that is unique to the teams' robots. If two teams share a feature, the one who works better trumps the other.

We also find our favorite bot in general and make predictions on who will be successful, who will not, based on the design aspects and performance on the practice field.

of course, prediction isnt everything... which is why we have match scouting!! the link to that stuff (which i made myseyuf) is [HERE] (in the case that anyone might want it...)