Scouting on Thursday?

[jayjaywalker3]

Originally Posted by lukevanoort

Ours consists of a very detailed rundown of the capabilities and mechanical design of a team's robot. We don't ask the "how many laps can you run" kind of questions that, at that point, the team can't really answer. Our match scouting's purpose is to tell us the answers to that kind of question. Our pit scouting sheets last year and this year are so detailed and specific that there are only maybe three people on our team that are familiar enough with everything on it to use it correctly (by use it correctly, I mean capable of explaining items on it to the teams being scouted in case they use different terminology), so the random freshman idea does not work. What we get from this specificity is a very, very detailed look at what a robot can do, and what it can't. Match scouting then fills in what it actually does. Together, the two give a very nice, relatively complete, picture of a team's performance.

Last year, we used our pit scouting to suggest methods that our alliance mates could use to defend against a team. For example, if an opposing team has a 6WD with a centre wheel lowered 1/4", you can probably spin them relatively easily with a well place shove to the corner. This is just a side effect of their design, which can only be changed by the addition of stuff like brakes (handily enough, whether a robot has brakes or not is also on the sheet).

As for what other teams do... I have seen and answered questions from the scouts that had no clue what they were doing. To be honest, I don't know why the teams that send out such scouting teams do it. They are getting worse than no info, they are getting unreliable info. I have also answered questions from a lot of scouts that ask something like "On a scale from 1 to 10, how fast is your robot?" Well, that is a completely useless question. Whats a '1' and whats a '10'? Is Tumbleweed a 10, and .5 ft/s a 1? Unless there is a really good scout asking those questions with actual numbers for each number in the scale, that data is effectively useless; nobody has standardized a scale from 1 to 10 of robot speed. Avoid questions like these 1->10 scales, and bad scouts like the plague.

To answer the numbers question, we have used a few teams of two and they got the job done. Last year we had four people, including me, who were able to use the scouting sheet effectively. I was busy programming, so we effectively had only three. We paired them up with another team member, which helps alleviate boredom, and sent them out to scout. We started late in the day, and finished our scouting early the next morning. (I believe we were down to two teams of scouts for a while, because one of the 'qualified scouts' was the safety captain). It really depends on you regional size. We really only got our scouting system in place at Palmetto last year (we had other things on our mind leading up to our first regional), and that was 48ish teams. With a larger regional it takes more people. I would like to have 5 teams of people going around at VCU this year (64 teams to scout), but our Thursday group (we do staggered arrival times, with the non-robot people arriving Thursday night) is probably too small to manage that.

Your system sounds very complicated to analyze but it does sound like it provides excellent and very detailed match strategies such as in your example. I am having trouble with that though. How useful is that if there is such a fine line between good defense and a penalty. That is how I have been perceiving the rules and what the judges have been saying at least. I also cannot have a system this complicated because not only am i not that knowledgeable about the specific design aspects of the robots themselves but most of the people who are, are working on our robot.

My scouting system is all written comments by generally knowledgeable people with some stats that they should report on. This is the same for match scouting. None of that 1-10 crap. Instead we watch match video later and talk with the person who commented on any robot.

My team also does staggered arrival times and our Thursday numbers are also not too great. I put the most emphasis on match scouting because i feel 2 people is enough for the pit scouting with pictures and comments.

Originally Posted by Priyadarshy

Well we get in the hotel at around 7-8 PM so we have plenty of time, the matches are only 2 mins long, its the time in between that takes a while. We will be watching every practice match and taking notes.

Heh yeah. I have yet to start organizing data and watching videos before 2 am. It has been a slight problem. Not that bad though. My information still did well though. I blame the Wii and just the fun of hanging out with team members.