In response to the lack of physical robotics competitions this year, PWNAGE #2451, Mukwonago BEARs #930, Spartan Robotics #971 and Orbit #1690 are organizing a virtual scouting competition!
Scouting Palooza is comprised of four different Awards. Each award is designed to exercise a different aspect of your scouting efforts. Enter one or all four! (But only one award per team!). These Awards are designed to be asynchronous and virtual.
The Four Awards Are:
Innovation Award
How has your team implemented a new and exciting idea to bring your team to the next level of scouting and competing?
Applied Scouting Award
Put your scouting skills to the test. You’ll be given an FRC competition data set. Create a pick list, synthesize match strategy, and predict the outcome of a match.
Data Visualization Award
Here’s some data, do something cool with it. Can you create a visual aid to better understand your data?
General Scouting Award
How do you deal with errors in your data? How do you train new students to scout? Tell us your favorite scouting story. Answer these and other questions to demonstrate your team’s scouting skills!
Submissions Open: January 15th
Submissions Close: February 28th
Winners Announced: March 15th
We’re super excited to be a part of this with our other partners, especially Team 2451 who has done a great job organizing!
One of my favorite elements is that we have competition judges from some big name companies like Google and Microsoft, among others. This is a great way to get your hard work and innovation with strategy, data collection & visualization in front of these companies and make FIRST loud in new ways.
Can’t wait to see all the great ways that teams are using data and strategy!
This is really cool and a great avenue for scouting and strategy! I didn’t anticipate much scouting this year, so this is making me regret not connecting with a new team in St. Louis yet.
The rules say that teams must use the data set provided. Since all of these matches are online, can teams supplement the data set with their own data or qualitative information?
I may have missed it but are there descriptions of the fields for the provided data set?
The CSV files have headers that are (hopefully) descriptive enough so that they are clear to anyone familiar with the game. However, we will add field descriptions soon to make sure everything is clear.
Yeah, I think the headers are clear enough. The big thing that stood out to me was the locations (autoStartingLocation and ShootingLocation). I assume your scouting app created a grid on the field and those numbers refer to a square on the field.
Is this a good place to ask general questions (for the good of all)? Or would you prefer all questions go through the email link?
If you don’t mind questions here…
Do you have a key for the shooting locations?
The data regarding robot climbs… when it shows 2 climbs for 1 robot, how does that work? I’m sure that I’m missing something, but… Example Match 2, Red team shows R1 & R2 with 2 climbs and R3 with 1 climb. This is where I’m confused.
This will also be added to the manual with a more in depth explanation soon. This is also the key for the autostarting locations.
This is to know how many robots climbed on this team’s alliance for that match including that team’s robot. The intention is to express whether or not a team is capable of climbing with other teams.
We’re glad and excited that teams are interested in this competition! Official updates will be posted on the website!
This is what we call a scouter error. It probably won’t be the last.
No excuses, but the first couple matches at the first competition of the year with new scouters…
Part of the challenge of scouting is how to deal with human errors and inconsistent data. There are numerous threads here on ways to try to avoid or compensate for it. Obviously we haven’t quite mastered that yet.
We are excited to now announce the grand prizes for each of four winning teams! Stay tuned for more info on prizes and judges. Remember - the competition closes February 28th. Happy virtual scouting!
Innovation Award — 1983 Skunk Works Robotics Applied Scouting Award — 1868 Space Cookies Data Visualization Award — 1410 The Kraken General Scouting Award — 2877 LigerBots
Thank you to all of the teams who competed, we had many great submissions, and it was amazing to see some of the things teams have come up with. We will be in touch with the winners in the coming weeks. We’re also putting together a repository of submissions for teams to use as a scouting resource, so stay tuned for that!
And thank you again to our partner teams, 930 Mukwonago BEARs, 971 Spartan Robotics, and 1690 Orbit for working with us to make this happen! Happy Scouting!
It probably won’t be the last.
I cast no aspersions. Just trying to understand. Ultimately, a number other than 0 means the robot climbed, correct?