White Paper Discuss: 2006 Aim High Robotics Competition Robot Scouting Sheet

[Tomasz Bania]

Originally Posted by Ianworld

After typing this it turned into more a rant, on scouting in general and less to do with the sheet.

As a driver the last two years I relied on my team to give me very accurate and effective scouting information. This meant different things at the regional and at the national level. At the regionals I could walk around and see most of the robots, get an idea for who they were and what they were capable of(a few years of experience and you can classify a bot pretty well in the pits.) What the scouting team focused on was extremely accurate and detailed reports of how the robots functioned on the field. Who they were pushed by or who they pushed? What was an effective defensive strategy against the robot? If you pushed them would they drop a tetra? Which loading station did they use? When they play defense do they block or shove? Do they have any tricks up their sleeve? Those pieces of information are really key for the drivers. They need to know their opponents and what they're going to do next. A basketball player doesn't look at a bunch of stats of another player and know how to play against them, its only through experience. Now FIRST robot drivers don't have a chance to learn, 2 minutes gives you a chance to try one or maybe two strategies against an opposing robot. You have to know beforehand which moves to make against which bots.

Now that information is useful at the regional and the national level. 6 people in the stands were assigned each to a robot to collect data that useful. A 7th person would keep track of the scoring and by whom it was done. The overall scoring by a robot would help us place them into overall categories for the picking. Scoring ability isn't the only factor to go by, but at least in the case of last year it was a very big factor and a good way to presort teams.

At the national level, the detailed information this sheet provides could be more useful. The teams are unfamiliar, there are 80 of them and they're often times much more varied than the regional you came from. In that case having a picture, some basic stats could be a nice starting point.

As a general idea though, going around and asking teams for their stats and abilities doesn't give a very good competition perspective on the robot. However I still always sent people out to scout every team, to study their robots and come back with detailed sheets like the one you posted. The main reason was that its an amazing way to learn about robots. I know my whole freshman year I didn't really get what was going on. Then at nationals, with other more capable people at the time working on our robot I explored. The ideas and possibilities changed my take on FIRST robots forever. The following year i designed a 10 foot triple jointed arm inspired by teams I had seen. Last year I spent my relatively little free time scouting out all of the swerve and crab drives I could. The moment I got back from nationals I CADed up my own version combining what i had seen into my own personal design. The robots themselves are a learning tools to take in and absorb.

So scouting for the competition requires cut throat details about how to compete with the other robots, but thats not all FIRST is about so scouting all of these details is important for learning and to understand all the creative possibilities that exist.

As for the sheet it fits my second category of learning about other robots very well. It covers basically all of the key points about robots and how they work. Quite a nice job.

Thank You for your opinion and to more greatly satisfy your needs, I will be posted an expanded version soon.

Thank You,
Micro3000x