Since the release of Stronghold, I have heard a lot of discussion about how crucial Scouting will be this year. Being capable of knowing what defenses an alliance can or cannot do will play a key role in the selection process before a match. But, in your opinion do you think that Scouting can be done in the pits via a Question and Answer model, or does it really have to be done in the stands by someone instead.
I know that each of the two methods have their benefits and that you are able to do both. But, I do feel as though you receive a lot more reliable information about a robot when you see it perform.
As many of us know, what a drive team says they can do is usually different from what happens after the match unfolds.
In all honesty, I’d say it’s better to do it in the stands. Seeing the robots interact - so to speak - with your own eyes is far more descriptive than a Q&A system in my opinion. The drive team can’t explain every single detail; they’re more focused on their Robot than anyone else’s. But if a scouter is watching from the stands, it’s easier to assess and judge what teams would be the best for their team’s alliance. It’s more difficult, sure, but I think it’s worth it.
For me and my team, I think it is definitely best to do stand scouting. Seeing how a team actually performs in a match is far more important than what they say they can do, regardless of the game.
That being said, my team does both. Pit scouting allows us to talk to the other teams, build up relationships, and learn more about their bot than we might see from the stands. Stand scouts will be focused on performance, and may not note some of the more unique aspects of the robots that pit scouts will be sure to record.
We have a scouting rotation, where 6 team members are on each rotation, scouting one robot every match. After their rotation is over (rotations are usually 3-4 matches or half an hour), they’re free to roam the event, but they are assigned a team to “expert scout”, where they need to approach the team in question and learn more about their team in order to make an accurate judgement.
Match Scouting provides raw statistical information that can be used to check a robot’s capabilities, while Expert Scouting provides insight into how beneficial they might be as an alliance partner, and gives additional information about mechanisms that we’re interested in.
I’m in agreement with the other responders. If you have resources for only one, do the scouting from the stands. If you have resources for both, do both. A majority of pit scouting data is inaccurate if you’re looking for any degree of precision, and even if it’s just a yes/no question, expect about 1/3 of the answers to be wrong. In most cases, teams’ expectations do not match their performance. In a few other cases, the question or answer is misunderstood or mis-recorded. Some teams (or at least some members of the teams) intentionally troll the pit scouts, giving answers that are intentionally wrong or capriciously made up on the spot; several individuals have admitted it on CD in pit scouting threads in previous years.
If you do pit scouting, remember that it is just a reference point to begin the real scouting. For example, if you have built a fast boulder cycling machine that can only cross the low bar, you’ll want to scout sapper robots heavily, and vice-versa. Pit scouting can help identify the robots to watch more closely.
Another value for pit scouting is apprising the team itself-- Edxu mentions making judgments on a team as whole, and I definitely see this as a value for pit/long term scouting. You can pick up a lot about a team by how they act around their pit, and that judgement, while it may not reflect on their robot performance, certainly may reflect on whether you want to work with them in a high stress environment such as eliminations.
This of course presupposes that your pit scouts can be trusted to make value judgments, which in my opinion is something somewhat rare to find in students (or people in general) naturally, but can be cultivated and trained in over time.
While pit scouting may not be the most accurate information gathering method, there’s definitely some merit to doing it:
Preliminary idea of the robot’s ability for qualification matches - while teams may (unintentionally) exaggerate their robot’s ability, it helps to know what kind of bots you’re going with/against.
General opinion of the team - Did pit scouting grossly differ from stands scouting? Did they know the answer to some of the more technical questions? This may affect alliance decisions.
For fun! - Talking with other people about their robots that they’re incredibly proud of is probably one of the best ways to learn at a competition. I’d recommend that any student conduct their own “pit scouting” even if they aren’t a member of the scouting team
If you’ve been in FRC more than a year you know to take all pit scouting with a block of salt. There are certain things that can always be gleaned from pit scouting. If they tell you they cannot fit under the low bar, they very likely are telling the truth based on the dimensions of their robot. If they tell you they can do a 4 boulder autonomous in the high goal… I’ll let my match scouts verify on field performance.
There are things you may be able to get besides drive train and other physical aspects of their bot that can be described during pit scouting. If you have an experienced coach, strategy expert, or knowledgeable pit scout you could send them with new scouts. An experienced strategist can figure out how to fit any robot into your alliance and optimize that match. An experienced strategist has also had X number of teams exaggerate their ability time after time to them. If Karthik were told by a team that they had the ability to do xyx, I would trust Karthik’s judgment on what he “feels” that team could realistically do in a match far more than the optimistic team than did it once in a reveal video (and I would trust my match scouts more than either).
Pit scouting definitely has its place, but if it’s something you can take real match data on… trust your match scouts.
In my experience, pit scouting is almost entirely worthless when it comes to assessing a robot’s capabilities, because teams lie, and lie, and lie. Not on purpose…they just tell you what they tried to design their robot to do, not what it actually can do–for that, you have to see it on the field.
Where pit scouting can be useful is in assessing drive trains. For example, knowing that a robot has Rhino tracks might be difficult under bumpers this year, but will be easy to see in the pits, so you’ll know to push those particular robots sideways if you’re defending against them.
Match scouting preferably video scouting is the best imo.
Here are some issues with pit scouting.
To start every team is going to be over zealous about their robot. They spent 6 weeks painfully building the thing so they are not going to tell you the thing doesn’t work. Some teams give out spec sheets which are generally better but there is still usually a level of exaggeration.
There is also the issue with pit scouts asking questions that have nothing to do with the robot. Last year I asked a pit scout to leave after they demanded to know our annual budget and how much a particular sponsor gave us. I have no problem releasing this info I have a problem with them asking this while I am extremely busy. There are also pit scouts who ask stuff about team organization, build spaces, tooling ect. Please do not be that team. If you want to know info about a team email them, talk to them during lunch, after the event ect.
But pit scouting does have its place imo. To start we take pictures of every robot at an event. We get that done in the pits. We also take photos of peoples pits. And we learn about match strategy as that definitely plays a role.
Pit scouting is very useful if it’s done by someone with experience and a good eye. I alway walk the pits and look at robots to ■■■■■ their potential. I also look for teams that may need help. I also like to have the match scouts walk the pits to get a up close look at the robots they will be watching.
I think the typical pit scouting with rookies walking around asking stupid questions is completely usless.
We also see it as a great opportunity to get to know a large number of teams. In 2014, we had Q&A with at least 50 of the 100 teams in Newton and came away feeling like we had good interaction with most of the field. Did something similar in 2015. But the key is having a set of specific and insightful questions that can be answered definitively. In 2014 it was measuring how fast a 'bot could inbound the ball. We used a stopwatch to measure demos with 10 reps. Don’t know this year’s question yet.
Given that there are 9 unique types of defenses a robot may need to traverse this year - and depending on the event, a robot may have between 8 and 12 qual matches - it is likely that you won’t witness all robots attempt to traverse all defense types during qualifications.
Determining whether the missing crossings were because a team can’t, prefers not to, or just never needed to cross a given defense seems like the kind of question that only pit scouting (both Q&A and inspection of the robot) could answer.
Pit scouting is far from perfect, however, it certainly doesn’t hurt. If you have the manpower to do it, there’s no reason not to pit scout. There’s plenty of situations that teams will never find themselves in during qualification matches, and good pit scouting can aid in making educated guesses as to how teams will fare in those situations. Asking “how many points do you score” is not a good pit scouting question. Getting concrete data in terms of design choices is.
My team uses pit scouting as a way to get face to face interaction with every team and get pictures of their robot. We typically don’t use their answers for much of anything, but it gives our scouters a chance to become better at interpersonal communication and if we notice teams that are struggling, we send people over to help.
