Hi,
I just wanted to ask everyone this. Would u guys like if some team, with help from others, makes a database of all teams’ features and share them with every team in the regional.
Think about it. It is valuable to know everyone else’s features ahead of time. It’ll benifit everyone.
What do u think?
Our team does that already. Team 237’s IBN which is totally student run does that at all the comps. we go to!
Look for us at The New England Regionals in New Haven CT and The NYC FIRST Regional at Columbia University!
(and hopefully at Nationals)
Last year at regonals, we were the 4th seed and had to choose other teams to join our alliance. We were not as prepaired as we would have like and scrambled to get a list in time to pick. Those who were at VCU last year may remember us trying to pick the number 1 seed, and then another team that had already been chosen…
So at nats we did something different. We collected data through out the compition. We sent usally 4 students to the stands for every match with a sheet of what we want to know, speed, blance 1 goal, balance 2 goals…ect. One student watched one bot. We had about 25 students total, so we were able to do this farily easily. We then put this data into a database, so that when we got to finals, we would have some clue as to pick. We ended up not needing to pick as we placed in the bottom half of the teams in our division.
Anyways, I payed more attention to the game and understood better while takeing notes. I don’t know that we shared this with anybody tho…
though process begun
There are a couple of big names scouting system out there. Last year it was GMCIA, SOAP, and WASH. They were all very successful at having an organized system, and got lots of help from lots of teams made them really good. Although I don’t thinkk GMCIA will happen this year, I know WASH and SOAP will.
The reason why I mentioned them is because they are well know, and lots of teams are willing to help out and share info with them. As long as a lot of teams are willing to trust the system, we can all benefit from it.
I am sure every team have at least one person who wants to do their own database for scouting, but I really suggest we try to use the same system, so we will be talking with the same data.
So mean while, I am interested in coming up with a list of variables… That we want answered during competition to describe how well a robot work.
The basic ones are:
How many balls can a robot pick up
How many goals can the robot grab
Can the robot lift goals up for traction? If so, how many?
Can the robot lock down on the field?
Is there an extension for homezone? If so, how long?
What did the robot do?
What is their strategy?
etc…
Any more suggestions?
Or, maybe the scouting sustems out there can show up their “scout sheets”, and what kind of questions were asked?
Thanks Ken for the kind words about WASH & SOAP. Don’t count out GMCIA this year, I think team 65 is working on it. It may not be as big after Nate Smith left team 66, but they’re working on something.
Last year was the rookie year for WASH and this year we’re working our hardest grow and make the whole scouting system more successful. I’ve got grand plans for WASH in the future, but we’re taking everything one step at a time. This year we’re using input from other teams to build the scouting list, in the future we will include more teams earlier in the process. In coming years we want to include other teams in the development of the software in order to make it a true multi-team effort.
Ken, I’ll clean up the current WASH scouting list and publish it in the Scouting forum this weekend. I encourage others to do the same.
Mike
Can someone post some details as to what SOAP and WASH were/are? I remember hearing about them, but nothing that wasn’t vauge.
Soap’s website is Soap108.com The only reason I have it memorized is because of the cool mouse pointer tail that they had on thier website last year!! I asked them where they got the script to do that (now I forgot what they said) 
Boo Hoo!!
As for WASH, I have never heard of them before?!?!?
DOH!!! Oops, Looks like I missed the link for them on Soap’s page, It’s on the left under the title “Partners”
Good Luck!
I’ll give it a shot and I’ll try to not be vague. I could probably save myself a lot of time by publishing all this on the web somewhere (the info on wildstang.com is outdated), but haven’t had the chance yet because I’m too busy replying to emails & posting on CD 
WASH is a scouting system developed by team 111 with help and input from 108, 45, and others. We focus on observing and recording what a team actually accomplishes in a match. Four scouts watch each match and record scouting data into our PalmOS application for the robot they chose to focus on for that match. Obviously no two scouts scout the same robot in the match. Examples of the data we’ll collect this year are: first move and first move performance, time to reach goal, traction & strength, rating of ball pick-up & scoring, max # of goals held, goals stolen or lost, plus more. I’ll post the full list soon.
Every 30-60 mins the scouts sync their palms with the PC that contains the master database, and merge the records from the palm into the DB. The PC database has the ability to create team summary pages on the fly as well as pages that summarize specific tasks (ie last year we had pages for BB rating / speed, limbo time, balance rating / speed, etc).
The summary sheets are not the only way to access WASH data. We upload all scouting data WASH captures to SOAP (team 108) who make it available on their website (http://www.soap108.com). Along with WASH data, SOAP captures match scoring, digital video of matches, and robot ability fact sheets. All this will be available on their website and public kiosks at select competitions.
I hope I didn’t forget anything. Let me know if you want more information.
Mike