Scouting Sheets

FIRST General Forum
1

We’ve been working hard getting ready for the upcoming competitions. So far our (2996) scouting sheets are looking pretty snazzy!

corrected v of 2013 PIT SCOUT.xls (43.5 KB)

corrected v of 2013 PIT SCOUT.xls (43.5 KB)


corrected v of 2013 PIT SCOUT.xls (43.5 KB)

2

One thing I would put on there is asking if it is a defensive or offensive robot.
Looks good!!

3

Location is spelled wrong. Other than that, they look great!

4

Probably a good idea to include how many disks they start with in autonomous.

Also, its called AUTO, not Hybrid.

Other than that, nice work.

5

Unless I’m reading their sheet wrong, it appears they have that under the “Teleop strategy” portion.

6

This may be of interest to people reading this thread.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=appinventor.ai_hiyou102.Scouting

7
  1. The sheets look great, although you might want more area to take notes.
  2. Without trying to hijack the thread, is pit scouting really all that valuable? I ask because, in our area, I’ve watched teams tell pit scouters that they can do things, but their performance on the field never backs it up. Isn’t field performance what ultimately matters?
8

I agree, the scouting sheet contains a lot of great information, however, I think a lot of this information should be made match-specific. That’s where you see a team’s strategy, and if their robot does what they say it does. However, I still believe that pit scouting should be done. You can get information such as if they can climb, if they can shoot, what type of drive do they have, the physical characteristics of the robot. (Yes, those can be scouted match by match, but the implementation would be quite trivial.

Actually, pit scouting can be useful. If a team says that they do this and this and this, but in fact they can hardly do one, then it shouldn’t matter. If a team has mecanum wheels in a game where pushing robots around is very important, then it was a bad design decision, and it will hurt them. Team RUSH came into a similar consequence last year, where wide bots ruled the field at the Michigan State Championships. We designed a long bot, which put us at a disadvantage, but that didn’t mean we competed the best we could. However, it was a deciding factor for a lot of teams who got into eliminations, and that’s just how the game was designed.

9

Are you interested in the ability to score in the pyramid goal?

10

Instead of them explaining where their start location is, it might be easier to just have a field diagram on the sheet and have them mark where they start and the path they take, if they move. I know it has worked wonders in the past for prematch meetings.

You might also want where they hang (ie: horizontal bar vs corner, and what side of the pyramid)

One of the benefits of pit scouting is that it gives the scouters, who are normally stuck in the stands all day, a chance to interact face to face with other teams. It also can be helpful to sort of “break the ice” for shy team members to talk to other teams. FIRST is as much about people skills as it is about robots.