How does your team scout?

[penguinfrk]

At the beginning of build season (part of our build process) we list all of the possible objectives to the game. This year, it was scoring goals, elevation, and then suspension. Along with that, we also listed any "obstacles" or extra functions: autonomous, climbing bump, under tunnel, defense.

Our team, at least so far in its history, only attends the Microsoft Seattle Regional, a week 4 or 5 event, so all of our scouts are expected to view webcasts or videos of previous events. We make a finalized scouting sheet, adding whatever we didn't initially list as an objective/function, along with driver skill, human player skill, and W-L-T record.

During the competition, Day 1 we do pit scouting as a priority. Clipboards with the pit map on the back and with pens tied to them (nicely done by one of our mentors) are given to about 6-10 scouts, depending on whoever isn't in the pits helping to pass inspection. Of course, we have a relatively large team (upwards of ~35 students at competition each day and total membership in the 60s), so we have plenty of scouts.

Day 2, the real matches are scouted with one person on each robot. 6 scouts are watching each match, a scout team leader should (I say this because the effectiveness will ultimately depend on the responsibility of this leader, as we learned the hard way this year) be sorting teams. This scout leader should be the most knowledgeable of all the scouts, and if not sorting the actual scouting sheets, should be watching every robot and sorting them into Whitelist (Yes!) or Blacklist (Absolutely not!). Other scouts are having some sort of downtime - alternating scouts each match.

Our mentor had connected to the internet there, so we had full access to the match results from the stands (no need to look at the scrolling standings). If no internet access is available at the competition venue, a hard copy would be printed (we printed it anyways) from day to day. From there, highlighters are your friends!

After day 2, the photographer is expected to have collected all of the robots on to a single storage device (obviously compatible with any laptop we bring). The scout lead should compile a list of 24 (number of teams in the eliminations, to ensure not all will be selected) robots most compatible with yours. We filed them into top tier (expected alliance captains, first picks) and second tier (expected 2nd picks).

On day 3, our team (mostly PR) talks to top tier teams to sell our team. The scouts in the stands scout only our whitelist (top/second tier) robots. We have one person in the pits at all times to talk to teams that swing by. If we're picked 1st or end up alliance captain, we use our second tier list to pick the next round.