With the change in qualifying scoring this year it makes scouting much more important. I think this may be why they changed it, to shake up the system.
I am a Mentor for 997 we have a system that seemed to work.
We use a spread sheet for scouting to evaluate ALL quantifiable skills a robot displays during play. We log the data and then use a weighted average to determine the MVBot, best mid fielder and goalie (we are a forward/middy).
We qualified first in the Oregon Regional and, based on our spread sheet we passed on higher seeded veteran teams such as 1540,753,488, 368 etc. and selected 2130, the 26th seed, with our first pick and, not to be outdone, 1515the 55th seed with the second (61 teams in Regional).
Our alliance captains faith in our scouting team was rewarded as we won the playoffs without loss, barring one dq which we should have won 11-1.
We think this is unheard of in the history of FRC for a #1 to select the #26 and #55, and even more unlikely to go on and win the Regional.
Scouting will be key to this years Championships as picking a kick butt bot to play goalie with the second pick will be difficult when most bots are playing offense, due to the scoring system used in qualifying.
Oh I should mention 2130 is a great midfielder/forward and 1515 is an unbelievable defensive bot.
Mostly it is a lot of work and organization by our scouting team. We use an excel spread sheet to log any attributes we think are important. Scoring. clearing balls in autonomous, crossing humps, tunneling, blocking robots that possess balls, scoring from mid field, scroring from goalie, etc. for every bot in the regional. But make sure they are quantifiable things, not agressive or fast. Data will be biased by the persons opinion.
It doesn’t really matter what you want to log, that is up to you, but it should be quantifiable.
Make data entry sheets listing these attributes, scouts (6 kids for each match) add team number and match number and log the occurances for each bot. After each match have someone log the data into your spread sheet.
then create weights for each attribute. IE if you are ranking forwards, you are interested in what? don’t care much if they can score from the mid field so this would be a low weighted skill. Scoring, hanging are big. retreating to the midfield is a good ability so is weighted but not as heavily. Kicking over one bump is also a lightly weighted attribute. But for a forward we don’t care about defense or ability to block shots, etc.
Add up the points and rank all three positions, plus we do an MVB for most valuable bot. The weighting is subjective but that is pretty much up to you. IE for our goalie we didn’t rank scoring goals at all, no value as we want a defender, but the ability to clear balls is desireable.
Don’t have the actual weighting here, I’m out of town, but that is just opinion anyway. Kids looked at mine and then did their own anyway.
hope this helps,
let me know if you get it. Really not difficult just a lot of work.
WHOO 997!! I’m really looking forward to working with you guys at nationals, sounds like your scouting system is top-notch.
-team videographer
[and it sounds like I will be helping with scouting when I’m not filming our matches, glad to hear things are running so smoothly…as scouting captain for team 956, I know how it can be difficult to pull all the different aspects of a robot into one solid number ]
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