Computer-Assisted Scouting

[FourPenguins]

MORT made some tentative steps into the brave new world of non-paper scouting this year, with a very buggy, student-developed scout program that never made it to competition.
Despite the fact that this software wasn't ready in time for competition, it raised some interesting points about the benefits and disadvantages of computer-assisted scouting and paper-based scouting.
Who else uses computers to help scout, what software/technologies do you use, and how do you think the system has helped or hurt your scouting abilities?

[anna~marie]

In the past HOT has used a collection of PDA's... it worked pretty well but it was too hard to implement this last year
It was very nice to keep things organized and statistics were so easy to figure

[Kristian Calhoun]

You may also want to take a look at this thread which discusses paper vs. computer scouting and the different methods which teams use. This past year, our computer scouting program was written in Java. Scouts recorded the statistics of each robot per match [each student was assigned a specific robot starting position (i.e center red, left blue, etc.) and at the beginning of each match, they'd record the team number, and fill out the sheet for that particular team's robot throught the course of the match. The papers would be collected and immediately entered into our scouting program. Once inputted, the program would analyze the data and could sort it into whatever form we needed (specific individual team stats, power rankings and lists of rankings based on different things such as number of 3 pt balls scored in auto, number of total balls scored (3pt/1pt), wins/loses, percentages, etc).

Besides match scouting, we also had scouts go down to the pits with digital cameras and take pictures of each teams robot. We then imported all the pics into Google's Picasa and labeled them.

This method of scouting proved to be extremely reliable, helpful, and accurate. At any time during the competition, the drive team could call a member of the scouting crew, and ask for any kind of information. We could then either tell them the info over the phone, or print it out and have someone run it down to the pits.

This is what our head scout, Neil Parikh, had to say about our scouting program in the aforementioned thread which I linked to.

Originally Posted by nparikh

Team 25 has finally moved into the future. For as long as I've been on the team, since the '04 season, we've used regular paper scoutings sheets + a filling bin...yay for that.

But after getting frustrated with having over 1200 sheets of paper to store, etc, by the end of 2 regionals, we've finally moved over to a paper/computer system.

Yes, our scouts do record information on scouting sheets (one for the match, one specifically for autonomous)...then that data gets fed into our amazing Scouting Program for analysis, output, and just about everything else under the blue moon!

This year I happened to notice that about 5 of us Robotics kids were in the AP Computer Science Class, and I figured, what a neat way to get hands on experience coding Java & we'd get a really neat scouting program. Regardless, we worked tirelessly with the help of Mrs. Morris (our computer science teacher who spent loads of time designing + perfecting it), it was done in time for the NJ Regional.

In addition, we have 2 video cameras taping matches and a photo team that gets pictures of every robot. These are fed into Google's Picasa for labeling, viewing, and searching.

We pride ourselves on the fact that about 95% of the data we collect is pure statistics, leaving out a significant portion of error and uncertainty that occurs with opinionated scouting. Luckily, I've got about 8-10 people that work hard and long all through the competition making sure we have accurate data, footage and pictures.

When the system was finally put into use at NJ & Las Vegas, it proved to be incredibly successful in helping us find the best robots, and also for helping to develop strategy for rounds. At both regionals, we made our scouting data available to any team who wished to take a look through it.

So yeah, we use computer + paper scouting. Paper means we always have a backup. Computers mean we have amazing speed & efficiency when looking up information. I don't think we'll ever look back

[SamC]

This year our team used paper and computers for scouting. We would record data on paper then pass it on to a crew of people who entered the data into an Excel spread sheet. That was convenient as you could sort it by Match, Team, and different statistics (shooting accuracy, defense, offense, # of balls picked up, etc...).

Earlier in the season a few mentors and students tried to make it an all computer system but it wasn't finished in time so we integrated the two together. Maybe next year it will all be ready!

[FourPenguins]

Originally Posted by calhounian

You may also want to take a look at this thread which discusses paper vs. computer scouting and the different methods which teams use.

Thanks for the tip. I did read that thread before posting and it was very informative, but for reasons of topicality decided that further inquiry should get a separate thread devoted solely to computer-assisted scouting.

[Starke]

Being a first year mentor (student on the team in previous years), I was able to teach students how to scout effectively. The students and I made a very large excel spreadsheet. It is similar to Greg Needel's scouting spreadsheet, with some modifications to better fit what we needed. I brought my laptop to The Championship, where some students and I went around and asked questions and punched the answers in the laptop. The students and I also found pictures of most of the robots before The Championship started, and we stored them in the laptop as well. It was great to have everything in one small place. And it came in handy for the Einstein Field (ask 1126) .

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by calhounian

You may also want to take a look at this thread which discusses paper vs. computer scouting and the different methods which teams use. This past year, our computer scouting program was written in Java. Scouts recorded the statistics of each robot per match [each student was assigned a specific robot starting position (i.e center red, left blue, etc.) and at the beginning of each match, they'd record the team number, and fill out the sheet for that particular team's robot throught the course of the match. The papers would be collected and immediately entered into our scouting program. Once inputted, the program would analyze the data and could sort it into whatever form we needed (specific individual team stats, power rankings and lists of rankings based on different things such as number of 3 pt balls scored in auto, number of total balls scored (3pt/1pt), wins/loses, percentages, etc).

Do you have any plans to release this program to all teams?

[dhitchco]

Most teams now do some sort of "computer-assisted" scounting which can be anything from
a) manually-tabulating scores from paper-based sheets into a Excel spreadsheet to
b) directly-recording scouting info into a PDA to
c) our team's use of optical recognition software to automatically scan and summarize all the scouting sheets into a database.

What kills me is all the teams running around taking photos in the pits of all the same robots. Isn't FIRST supposed to have a central database of all 1,000-plus robots prior to the first regional event? Oh well, maybe somebody else can really get this going better. Maybe even a photo kiosk at the championship?

The real trick to scouting (pit or match) is to make it SIMPLE and truly meaningful when picking alliances. Too much data input just confuses the process. Keep it simple.

[kramarczyk]

The gearheads (1189) have been using a electronic system based upon PHP/MySQL. Additionally, we have been providing access to the system to everyone in the arena via a wi-fi network we set-up. An example of the system provided at the 2006 Waterloo regional is available at:
http://blarg.moonoo.com/crossing/

A system such as this provides an opportunity for collaborative scouting. I realize that certian aspects of scouting are propriatary, but for definable metrics this would reduce the burden on each time. Thoughts?

[nparikh]

Originally Posted by cromat44

Do you have any plans to release this program to all teams?

We'd love to--but we've faced a number of set backs in that a) most people wouldn't understand how to use it b) it's written in console Java and so most people would have a hard time getting it to run unless they have JCreator on their computers already.

Perhaps one of our Java programmers can do so cough Alexa cough.

[Tim Delles]

Team 229 has always used paper when doing scouting (and mostly the mind as well)

This year it is my hope that we can switch over to the wonderful world of computer-assisted scouting (in one format or the other).

I have looked into this in the past and as has been said there are both benifits and consequences to using computers instead of the good old paper and pencil routine.

Good luck in whatever you all choose to use.

[[527]phil]

I'm experimenting with a scouting program that I'm developing myself. I'm still a noob in VB but I'm learning at a fast pace. Basically what I'm doing is making a GUI for both a laptop, and a PDA running windows pocket 2002. When you input data into the program, it places it in an excel spreadsheet that can be transmitted Via a wireless connection to the PDA, or vice versa. that way the scouter's in the stands can just send the new data right to the pits.

EDIT: A few people told me that Wireless networks are banned at the competitions, so I'll have to figure out something else.

[Dylan Gramlich]

Originally Posted by Starke340

Being a first year mentor (student on the team in previous years), I was able to teach students how to scout effectively. The students and I made a very large excel spreadsheet. It is similar to Greg Needel's scouting spreadsheet, with some modifications to better fit what we needed. I brought my laptop to The Championship, where some students and I went around and asked questions and punched the answers in the laptop. The students and I also found pictures of most of the robots before The Championship started, and we stored them in the laptop as well. It was great to have everything in one small place. And it came in handy for the Einstein Field (ask 1126) .

I must say i was quite shocked when you whipped out the laptop like a ninja and gave us the lowdown on the strategy to beat the newton alliance(which worked for one match but then they changed there strategy and we broke...). But the simple program you had on there looked quite helpful and easy to use.

[ewankoff]

our school district issued every student their own laptop. in the past years we have tried to develop programs that each scout could use their own laptop to update a scouting database. unfortunatly we had problems integrating these programs with our team ad the network and they did not work. last year we combined paper scouting with a computer database. scouts would fill out of sheet of 4 matches where they scouted the same spot 4 times. then the sheets were run up to a person inputing it into the excel spread sheet. this method helped us get into the finals in palmetto last year.

[Fred Sayre]

I started to talk to the guys responsible for this:
http://stampscouting.org/

It is a collaboration of PNW team members to great a web browser based database to be used with networked computers. The concept is great but there were too many late minute issues to be worked out for us to use the system.

As a alternative, we created an access database, you can check it out:
http://students.washington.edu/fsayr...TLScouting.mdb

It has a robot-match input form that represented all of the data for a match per robot, and mimicked paper forms that our scouts filled out during the matches. That form fed a stats table that stored the information. We then used two queries to represent the data. One calculated averages of each field for each robot - Avg shooting score, autonomous score, penalties, times that the robot made the ramp etc. Also we used a query that basically represented most of the data that we collected so that we could look at a team's performance on an individual match basis. If you know your way around access it is pretty convenient, you can right click on the team field and filter by a certain team, sort by match number, and get a good impression of how the teams were doing. We were able to accurately predict which opposing alliance teams posed the biggest threat