Rookie scouting coordinator requesting input

[Jessi Kaestle]

For your Pit scouting I think you captured most of the relevant information except for Autonomous Period. If you added a section asking what Autonomous routines the team had that would round out your sheets.

The other issue I had with your Pit scouting sheet is the part where the team signs off on the sheet. What was your reasoning behind asking for that?

As for your match scouting sheet the information is extremely subjective. I have found in the past that if the scouting sheet is too subjective than you cannot determine a realistic account of what the robot can and cannot do.

What I would suggest is for the match scouting sheet come up with some more questions that ask for objective results (# Balls scored, # balls kicked, etc...)

[Wildcat]

Originally Posted by Jessi Kaestle

For your Pit scouting I think you captured most of the relevant information except for Autonomous Period. If you added a section asking what Autonomous routines the team had that would round out your sheets.

The other issue I had with your Pit scouting sheet is the part where the team signs off on the sheet. What was your reasoning behind asking for that?

1. autonomus is not included on the pit scouting sheet because last year when i was working with the scouting team instead of leading it i found that we would get inaccurate descriptions (if any) for autonomus.

2. the signature is there in an attempt to crack down on people that slack off and do not do their pit scouting because last year the scouting team would hand out clip boards with blank forms and get them back with the same blank forms. At the worst, mentors from my team found clip boards with blank forms scattered around the arena.

[Wildcat]

.pdf version of the scouting presentation i plan on giving to my team, any thoughts?

[EthanMiller]

Autonomous header is spelled wrong. Thought you ought to know.

[EricLeifermann]

I agree what was said before with the subjectivity to your match scouting sheet. If you make it easy and just allow the scouters to just circle things like did the robot hang? yes/no. how many balls kicked? ___ how many balls scored? ___ any penalties? yes/no final score blue____ red____, etc.. This will give you better data for alliance selection and will make it easier and faster to filter through than, this robot moved forward in autonomous and then they moved around and kicked some balls and then they did this and then they did that then they tried to hang, overall I'd say this was a good robot.... numbers are better than peoples opinion and if you give a set place where the numbers will always be it will allow everything to be accumulated faster when you want stats on a team and stuff for matches and alliance selection

[Wildcat]

Originally Posted by EthanMiller

Autonomous header is spelled wrong. Thought you ought to know.

thanks for the catch

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

I agree what was said before with the subjectivity to your match scouting sheet. If you make it easy and just allow the scouters to just circle things like did the robot hang? yes/no. how many balls kicked? ___ how many balls scored? ___ any penalties? yes/no final score blue____ red____, etc..

thats what my original draft of the sheet was like, mentors from my team wanted it more open-ended for strategy purposes

[EthanMiller]

Maybe combine both then? Circles + numbers with room for explanation?

[Wildcat]

Originally Posted by EthanMiller

Maybe combine both then? Circles + numbers with room for explanation?

there was something like that on the sheets last year, from my viewpoint working with the scouting team last year it did not work out very good

[gblake]

Wildcat,

There is a way to test-drive both your match scouting process, and your analysis of the data you collect during the matches.

Use the 5th Gear simulator with live humans players and scouts to run a set of qual matches; and use your scouting methods as those matches unfold. Then use your analysis methods and see if you are happy with the result.

If the results look "off" you can review (using the replay feature) the pertinent matches to see if you can figure out why the scouts came up with inaccurate assessments, or to identify how to modify your metrics.

At the end you can decide if the scouting results identify the "best" potential allies for your team?

See this post (5th Gear Scouting-Aid Suggestion).

Also, by searching for the key words "5th Gear Scouting" you will find a couple of recent threads on the subject of scouting. At least one of them has formats and metrics you can compare to the ones you are planning to use.

Blake

[Wildcat]

thanks for the info, it looks a lot simpler than what i originally had planned for a simulation... definitely gonna have to try this out

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Wildcat

thanks for the info, it looks a lot simpler than what i originally had planned for a simulation... definitely gonna have to try this out

Glad to hear it - Let us know what happens - by PM or in the forum

[Ben Martin]

In my 5 years of doing scouting, the two biggest items I have found useful are 1) how many points/game pieces each robot is worth and 2) pictures. An objective measure of driver ability is also useful (last year, how easily you got scored on was a limited measure of this). Last year, summing the average number of game pieces each team could score accurately predicted about 80% of the matches at the regionals we attended. This year, points may be used similarly (we'll see after week 1).

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by BMartin 234

In my 5 years of doing scouting, the two biggest items I have found useful are 1) how many points/game pieces each robot is worth and 2) pictures. An objective measure of driver ability is also useful (last year, how easily you got scored on was a limited measure of this). Last year, summing the average number of game pieces each team could score accurately predicted about 80% of the matches at the regionals we attended. This year, points may be used similarly (we'll see after week 1).

I have to agree with this. I ran a scouting crew for 5 years (, that scares even me!) and every year we got better.

As currently written, there's no way you'll be able to concisely summarize the information you have available. IMHO, what you need is numbers, and you don't need very many of them.

In my experience, the more information you ask for from scouts, the less you can trust it. In 2007 we asked for probably a dozen numbers per robot per match... and we ended up using only 2. The scouts didn't even report most of the other numbers, there was too much going on in the match. So in 2008 and 2009 we asked for way fewer numbers. In 2008 we asked for: # lines in auton, # of lines crossed in teleop, balls hurdled, balls placed. In 2009 we asked for: balls scored (approx), balls scored on robot (approx), and Empty Cells delivered. Ask for any more and the scouts won't get good numbers, and they'll get really mad at you really fast.

That said, we also had a pair of experienced kids who kept subjective notes. It's important that you trust the judgement of the note keepers though, a parent you've just pulled in off the street probably won't be able to give you opinions you trust.

In pit scouting you've got a lot more room to play, but whatever you do, it needs to end up in an easy to digest format. And as others have said, pictures are really important. You've probably got that one kid who can keep all the robots at your event straight, but not everyone can do that.

PM me if you're interested, and I can see if I can hook you up with copies of our old stuff to look over.