Scouting on Thursday?

[synth3tk]

Well, while that's true (about the robot-in-action-any-day part) PIT scouting is more important on Thursday. It isn't necessarily in action. MATCH scouting on Thursday is not really very indicative of what a team can do. Major tweaks and changes take place before the first match on Friday.

Now that's not to say you shouldn't do match scouting on Thursday, I just agree that pit should be the focus.

[Akash Rastogi]

I have to say...I'm very glad that 2590 scouted during practice day b/c we were undefeated that day. If they had seem us only during qualifiers, we may not have been first pick.

[jayjaywalker3]

Originally Posted by blakcheez

Well, while that's true (about the robot-in-action-any-day part) PIT scouting is more important on Thursday. It isn't necessarily in action. MATCH scouting on Thursday is not really very indicative of what a team can do. Major tweaks and changes take place before the first match on Friday.

Now that's not to say you shouldn't do match scouting on Thursday, I just agree that pit should be the focus.

How many people do you need for pit scouting. My team was okay with 2 people pit scouting and then me scouting out our opponents and allies in the pits before our qualifiers with them. What exactly does pit scouting consist of for you guys. All ive seen of other people pit scouting is sending their newbies with multiple choice test for one of our members in the pits. Those newbies did not know what they were talking about nor did they care. They were not interested at all.

[Priyadarshy]

612 records all of practice day and then has a film analysis session on thursday night

[jayjaywalker3]

Originally Posted by Priyadarshy

612 records all of practice day and then has a film analysis session on thursday night

Doesn't this take a lot of time though?

[Priyadarshy]

Originally Posted by jayjaywalker3

Doesn't this take a lot of time though?

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.

[lukevanoort]

Originally Posted by jayjaywalker3

How many people do you need for pit scouting. My team was okay with 2 people pit scouting and then me scouting out our opponents and allies in the pits before our qualifiers with them. What exactly does pit scouting consist of for you guys. All ive seen of other people pit scouting is sending their newbies with multiple choice test for one of our members in the pits. Those newbies did not know what they were talking about nor did they care. They were not interested at all.

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.

[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.

[Dominicano0519]

well on thursdays you can actually get a big feel for what the spread of robots is ( by that i mean how many of each type of robot are there shooters arms and rabbits for example) then you can see who finished their robot on time and who is still building up to that moment that you interview them. Also you can ask for their weight and if they are weighing in at 119.5 then you know they removed something, and if it was there to begin with it might have been important so they might have a flaw there.

Thursday is also a good day to get a feel for how trustworthy a team is and to get to know them a little better

i mean if on the interview they say they can do it all and in a match on Friday the can barely score three laps and no hurdles then you know not to trust their word on saturday when they say to give them the inside track because they are gonna do a full lap in hybrid and know a ball down

[Aren_Hill]

Originally Posted by Dominicano0519

Also you can ask for their weight and if they are weighing in at 119.5 then you know they removed something, and if it was there to begin with it might have been important so they might have a flaw there.

wrong, for the first time ever my team was underweight at the first weigh in at 119.7 fully functional no cheesing.

From a pit setup/pit crew standpoint, scouting in the pits on thursday can get really annoying. Its kind of ridiculous how teams expect you to stop exactly what your doing and answer some random questions that will in all likeliness barely help them, when you could be continuing the important work you were doing. just my opinion friday or later thursday would be fine but leave teams alone who look busy pretty please

[jayjaywalker3]

Originally Posted by Dominicano0519

Thursday is also a good day to get a feel for how trustworthy a team is and to get to know them a little better

i mean if on the interview they say they can do it all and in a match on Friday the can barely score three laps and no hurdles then you know not to trust their word on saturday when they say to give them the inside track because they are gonna do a full lap in hybrid and know a ball down

Is this a huge problem? Lying? I thought some teams may be optimistic but do people actually lie?

[lukevanoort]

Originally Posted by jayjaywalker3

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.

I agree with you about about it being not quite as valuable this year. I have thought about going to a more simplified sheet in light of the nature of this game. Determining hurdling rate and driver skill is probably more important, but that comes from match scouting. However, I figured that I'd rather have too much info and not use it than too little and need it. But, if you can't make use of the data gathered by our style of pit scouting, then gathering that data is a waste of valuable time.

Originally Posted by jayjaywalker3

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.

I agree with that too, if you have limited manpower, you should put it towards match scouting. Pit scouting can't really tell you how a robot actually performs - match scouting does.

[Rick]

It is almost impossible to win a FIRST event WITHOUT scouting on Thursday.

[Jeff Waegelin]

Originally Posted by Ricksta121

It is almost impossible to win a FIRST event WITHOUT scouting on Thursday.

I agree with Rick. You have to get a head start on your scouting on Thursday. If you don't scout on Thursday, you will have no idea what your partners and opponents can do in your first few matches on Friday. You can ask them then, but you'll be behind from the start. Scout early and often.