During the contest, which features do you pay attention for understanding robot’s potential? What you will be considering? If you’ll ask 5 question about teams’ robots, what you’ll ask?
Generally, it’s hard and unreliable to judge robots based on their potential. For scouting purposes, we only rely on how they’ve actually performed on the field during a match.
Likewise, asking a team about their robot’s potential usually results in an answer that sounds much better than the reality is. If I’m asking a team about their robot, I try to stick to pure facts (e.g. weight, how many motors on their drivetrain, do they have a mechanism that extends beyond the frame perimeter, etc).
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Honestly, it doesn’t make sense to me when teams indiscriminately send scouters around to ask a bunch of questions about every robot. We’ve never implemented that form of information gathering, but it seems like it would be time consuming, lossy, and inaccurate.
I’d advocate for observing the robot up close to figure out it’s basic qualities (e.g. drivetrain type), and asking specific questions about match performance (“we noticed you didn’t score any cargo in that last match, why was that?”).
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The robot’s potential is greatest on top of Hab 3. Some robots have a higher center of gravity so they might be the highest potential. The robots that flip onto the platform are often moving the most weight to the highest position.
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U created a good meme here.
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Either the number of volts, or elevation in meters, above ground.
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So, uh… which regional is the highest above sea level? Colorado?
We’ll take the highest robot at that regional as our first pick, please!
/s
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The ones that score points. Sounds flip, but we’re tracking what game pieces they use during matches and where they score them (as well as start and final hab levels). Teams that play a game compatible with our abilities are the ones that we put highest on the pick list.
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Honestly one thing I look closely at more than most other things when looking for potential partners is how well a teams bumpers were constructed. Poorly constructed bumpers/bad bumper mounting can cause lots of problems in elims.
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Personally I prefer to make my picklists solely based on bumper quality. If you have reversible bumpers you’re automatically on the DNP list btw.
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I’ll have to tell one of my other mentors that. I already hit him with the fact that reversibles are the second-easiest type to get a robot disabled for if they come undone. (The easiest? Base with covering skirt.)
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Our team uses this strategy in scouting as well. If something really off happens, we’ll send a couple of scouts to go ahead and ask what happened. This is also used on Saturday morning if we have any close ties in our pick list, so we can see if someone should be prioritized.
We used to track all the pit scouting info in Tableau with our match data, but we never used it. This year, we finally got rid of it so we could focus on better performance data collection.
We simply scout our own team then hopefully form the strongest alliance including it if in a position to do so. In essense our teams entry is just another entry and judged as such. Many years what we design as a team is not necessarily what we do best as a team. The way we find out is by scouting it same as the others we scout… which is not every team. Once we find out what we can actually do, that makes it easier to find others to help.
Day 1 is about winning matches by 1 point, day 2 is about finding potential elimination partners and how to compete against the the top teams.
In terms of what we look for in potential partners. Fill in the blanks and durability. No need to ask capabilities, just watch them closely. Note capabilities and liabilities. Expected performance is indicative of past results.
Teams lie its pointless to ask much better to know. The drive captain knows before they talk with teams in upcomming matches
“Pit Scouting” to find the best robot generally gets mixed results. I think finding out the ‘general’ characteristics of a robot–whether they can go high on the Rockets, whether they are planning to start from HAB2, whether they have a HAB climb–this is useful info when putting together the last half of the ‘pick list.’
But ‘real scouting’–watching matches will provide more accurate answers for these questions. Teams will tell you things that they’re hoping to be able to do but can’t.
But data is interesting and you can’t get it from the stands. I like to learn about what drivetrains other teams have–would like to have statistics to direct our own future designs… If people are winning with the kitbot for instance. Or what kind of wheels have succeeded. How many horsepower (watts) (motors x count) they’re putting to the floor. Seeing a definite trend toward more horsepower in robots–but all of this data is only useful when you can correlate it to ‘who won?’.
The very best value in ‘pit scouting’ isn’t really in the scouting. Only eight teams will be picking an alliance–so for those that aren’t, you want your scouts to meet and interact with the scouts from the best teams. You want to be seen and liked and be remembered by them. Learn their names and you’ll be able to say ‘hi’ when you pass them in the stands or halls. When the quals are drawing to a close, you’ll be able to connect with them more easily and remind them to check how successful you’ve been–HAB2, six times, or some such. Many teams are ‘done’ scouting after the first day of quals–they come Saturday with a ‘pick list’ already. So you might try to ‘connect’ with your potential team captains late Friday.
Note, many kids are adverse to ‘selling’ your team to the leaders, but in fact we know advertising works because there’s a whole industry based on it. If your scouts don’t want to try’n ‘sell’ your team, you’ll probably need to find other kids that can.
To me, poorly constructed bumpers on a non-rookie robot means that they were an afterthought especially if the mounting system is awkward or unnecessarily complex. This makes me wonder how much thought went into the drivetrain and scoring mechanisms.
If you are going to pit scout, send someone with strong mechanical aptitude to judge the robot. Also send someone who is a “people-person” to judge how easy the team will be to work with and to show how easy your team is to work with.
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This is often due to wishful thinking on the part of the team being scouted.
My older son used to ask “what are your robot’s weaknesses” with a straight face. About a third of the time, teams would actually tell him.
Are Reversible Bumpers really that big of a Taboo? We have been using them for the past 3 years without any issues of them reversing in game or getting us disabled.
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Like others have said, potential means nothing in the face of proven scoring abilities. It doesn’t matter if a team has the potential for <10s cycle times if they struggle to hold a hatch panel now.
Asking a team questions about their robot is nice to do to learn about other systems and mechanisms, but is a very poor way of determining how well they’ll actually perform. You should always look at their actual match performance to see what they can do at your current event.
When done correctly, reversible bumpers are very convenient for those quick match turnarounds. However, the whole appeal itself is based on flawed logic: you’ll rarely get that quick turnaround, but you’ll more than likely have multiple fixes or improvements to make on your robot, which usually require you to take the bumpers off.
The teams that have the best bumpers realized that the ability to remove the entire bumper system quickly is much more beneficial than just changing the color. That shows a greater understanding of the underlying factors, which means that they probably have that same level of understanding for every other part of their robot.
If your team has nailed reversible bumpers (which it sounds like), than you have nothing to worry about. Taking bumpers off during repairs isn’t required, so if you have a solid chassis and can work around them you’ll be fine.
There are plenty of ways to have quick bumper attachment and removal systems nowadays. 1023 has used buckle latches for 2 seasons now, and I could not recommend anything else after using them. We have had 0 issues with them, and taking them off is a matter of seconds. I know other teams have similar setups, and I haven’t heard of any issues at all.
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The difference between potential and realized performance, might be a useful metric.