Poor team scouting methods?

[SteveGPage]

Originally Posted by Brad Voracek

For scouting, the only hard advice I can give is something that's been given many times before : a picture is worth a thousand words.

No matter how much data you collect, friday night when you are reviewing the day making a rough sketch of what picks you may make : it's really hard to remember robots by team numbers. My best advice to you is to get someone to go and take pictures, with a number in the picture, of every robot. Multiple angles if possible, trying to get their manipulator. It's always the best from my experience.

I absolutely agree. Often, even with extensive scouting - and I think we have one of the more extensive scouting systems - there are still "holes" in the data. I make it a priority to get multiple shots of the teams on Thursday, and then any updates to the robot's configuration on Friday. That way, on Friday night when we begin to look at alliance partners, we also look at the pictures. There are more times than I can count where we saw the picture and said, "Oh yeah, they were the team that did ...." and while we have antidotal info on them, the scouting sheets and records failed to record them. With 6 teams competing every couple of minutes, there are some aspects that we see, but fail to record. Photos help "remind" you of that info.

Also, to address another point mentioned in an earlier post, I agree that performance data is much more important than pit data. We still collect a lot of pit data, but really it has a different purpose. Pit data is a good way to know who the teams are, it acts as a PR function, it gets the students involved in talking to teams, and I have found that our newest team members - usually Freshman and Sophomores - actually learn a lot about the robots when they have to ask how many CIMS, what type of transmission, Omnis vs Mecanums, etc... Secondly, it also keeps them busy, and out of trouble if they have something to do! But, while we record all that data - it is the performance data that tells us how compete in each match. What our alliance partners can do, what the opposing alliance can do, what type of strategy should we employ, etc... and then, finally, it helps us when we are then picking our alliance partners in the finals.

I tell our students that we will lose one, that we should have won, because something unforeseen will happen, but we will win one that we should have lost because of good scouting. That is our scouting mantra!

Best regards,

Steve