This thread is in honor of all those impressively irrelevant or hilariously phrased pit scouting questions we’ve heard at competition. Please post any you’ve heard or would love to ask. Have fun with this! 
Examples:
“How many linear feet of zip ties are on your robot?”
“Is it boy or a girl?”
“If you were to compare your robot to an unladen swallow, would it be African or European?”
Props to my teammate Chase for coming up with the idea for this thread.
What is the weight of your code?
How many bits do you use?
How many wheels is your mechanum drive?
“On a scale of 1 to 10, how good do your bumpers look?”
not really a “best” question, but rather a little embarrassing.
Them: “Did you use Windriver or Netbeans for coding?”
Me: “We used Labview”
Them: “…oh”
This is a serious question… We have it on our pit scouting question sheet.
I hope you don’t ask them. haha
I enjoy some of the “stupid” questions. For example, the only correct answer for that one is “11”. Similarly, someone from a different team came and asked me how many seconds ago our drive team had left the pit. My answer was 347 and a half. He said ok, took about two steps and then stopped as he realized what had happened.
Similarly, I love the questions that you can answer factually but you know that when you do it’s going to screw up their data processing. For example, there’s lots of non-exhaustive multiple choice: “does your robot use traction wheels or mecanum?” For us the correct answer is “no”. Similarly, I like questions where the answers might become skewed so much that the average won’t mean anything. If you ask how far robots can shoot you’ll get one robot like ours that will go like 100 feet, and if you average that with a bunch of other robots that shoot between 10 and 20 feet your average will end up being above the distance that all but one of the robots shoot.
Oh true. Sorry, I misread the OP’s question.
“How many wheels are on your robot?”
“7”
Shooter wheels are wheels too
Then, 14?
“On a scale from 1 to 10, how much aloha does your team show?”
“What’s the most points your robot can possibly score?”
I’ve always loved to see how my students answer that one.
Before bag day we were at a local practice field playing catch with another teams robot. We tossed the ball back and forth across the truss, catching it. and throwing it back. With our permission the team used one of these volleys in their revile video. This weekend at a competition one of their students doing pit scouting asked us several questions. His last question was: If we threw a ball over the truss do you think your robot could catch it. I just smiled and asked him if he had seen their revile video.
How many motors are on your robot?
Same with the wheels, I think the intent was in the drivetrain. I think it was for last year, so … 10?
What type of drivetrain do you have?
-mecanum
How many wheels do you have?
-um, four??
Well, unless you have some other multiple of 4, I guess.
How fast does your robot go?
Now, this is a serious question, but it goes anywhere from “I don’t know”, “pretty fast”, to making up a number since we haven’t measured it.
“What is the gear ratio of your drivetrain?”
Our answer
“Umm something like a Million to One…”
scouter writes down our answer
One of our scouts asked a team: “On a scale of 1-5 how is your driving capability?”
Their answer was 10.
Stay classy 987.
The quality of a teams robot is often much more closely correlated to the quality of their bumpers than most people would guess. While asking a team this wouldn’t do much good, this is actually not such a bad stat to have.
We often give our drivetrain speed in knots to pit scouts.
Scout: is there anything else you would like to add?
Me: yes, they have an extremely attractive driver
Scout: surprised then laughs
Me: no seriously, write that down
Come by out pits and you’ll get it in a variety of colorful units-- fractions of a space shuttle’s top speed (1/2000), the speed that a stalk of bamboo grows by (329,184), or if we’re feeling nice, miles per hour (~10mph).
Questions i have seen this year are
the classic “What team number are you?” fools look at the sign
This year “Can your robot pick up?” Nooo… That big box with the wheels on top is just there to look good you dummy, get you stuff right or just ask to look at the robot to make your own observations before asking stupid questions.
I get the what team number one atleasy twice every regional and i avoid answering questions because i am usually in the back of the pit working on the robot.