Team 201 mostly just uses scouting to pick alliance partners if we’re in the top 8. We also use the data we’ve collected to formulate a stragety against our oppotent during a match, but this does not really get used much.
Another way to read this question would be:
How much of the data you collect do you actually use? (25%, 75%, 100%??)
Lastly, if a scouting network was created over this summer (who’s developement would be open to all), would your team be willing to use it and submit data to it? Also, how useful do you think data, from a network like this, would be?
Yes there is alot of good uses for strategy. We use it to see if they have ai and if they are against us to plan agaisnt it. Helps us check out are alliance partners to see if we are gonna have to do more work to win or if we have a good alliance partner. and a good stratgey against the other team like who to totally knock out if we need to
we actually have a team that scouts and then when we get are assignments on who we are with, the drivers go out and talk to the the teams they are with and against
We use scouting primarily to see who we’ll be able to push around and how fast their auto is. All I really want to know is how many motors they’ve got in the drive train and if they’ve got them geared higher or lower than us. We also like to know before hand if a team has a tendancy to take stacks out arbitrarily. For building our pick list for eliminations we used video more than anything. We must have watched three hours of matches Friday night… yawn
At midwest, we were paired with alot of rookie teams and they didn’t really know much strategy. So our scouting came in use when trying to figure out autonomous modes and and basic functions. We had three or four main guys that did aqlot of work. And we tried to split it up amongst our team, but most of them didn’t care, and just made up results and stuff. So at west michigan, we’ll have our main scouters, figuring out what other teams do. That way we can pick partners (if in top 8) or we can form strategy against other teams.
Our team had just used an excel type spreadsheet to organize data (which didn’t do much good)
So this year we have been developing an access database to organize it all, but we are learning as we go…
We scouted all but 4 teams in cleveland (thats 60 teams) and all but a few in chicago…
We just used ours to look up info on oponents before matches and also to find out what our allies can do… the section where we recorded what peoples autonomous could do was especialy useful.
If we had ever been in a picking position we would have probably used the scouting to pick alliances also…we had a whole system set up that would rank people based on certain specifics that we could pick… cool stuff…
Our team would LOVE to get involved with some kinda of open source type project for scouting…where everyone works together and developes stuff for it, like software for different platforms and such… Lets do it!
In my opinion, we have a very nice scouting set-up. Everyone on the team must scout. They are assigned in groups of 4-5 for approx. 1.5 hour shifts. Those not scouting are either free to do as they please, or in the pit. We use the information we gather while scouting (we scout during qualifiying rounds and practice rounds) to accomplish many tasks. First of all, it allows us to see how teams perform rather than what they say they can do. Because of this our alliance is stronger due to the fact that we don’t overestimate the performance of our partner. We also have a general idea of how the opposing teams can compete. Both in terms of strategy and robot/driver capabilities. By scouting nearly every round, we are also able to get a more “full” picture of a teams performance, as often drivers will perform better as the competition progresses. Because every match is scouted, every team is scouted several times. Going into the finals, we average every team’s performance, giving us a good overall view, rather than “In this match they really excelled, so they must be good all the time” That’s about it…
As a driver, i go out scouting with my coach and some others. I can tell you, we only use scouting to plan out which autonomous mode program to use, depending on the speed and strength of other robots, otherwise, we adapt our strategy on the field. I don’t think anyone actually was able to plan out a whole match by scouting and strategizing. This game is mostly who ever can get the most boxes in automode, and then you move them back and forth to manipulate your score. If you don’t ahve a great automode, your probably (no always) at a disadvantage
we use ours to find info on the robots that are in the upcoming matches mostly, and it also worked very well when we picked 201 at midwest regional, i really didnt get to see their robot but the scouts kept telling me about it, and when it came to pick, i had to pick them, all of my scouting sheets all had good info on 201’s robot. Scouting helps alot with the game…it gives a team a heads up on whats to come…
thanks 201, and da bears on being a great alliance partners…
you guys rocked!
*Originally posted by Pin Man *
**Scouting makes the competition so much easier **
It also makes strategizing easier as you know what EXACTLY (well almost) you’re up against. Again believe it or not, it helps in the pits. Why? Less to fix…i.e. you know if you can’t move them and they have a brake…don’t burn out your motors trying to move them, etc…
scouting is amazingly tedious at times… (Come on… who can actually sit for at least 3-4 hours at a time,even with great 'bots on the field) but also amazingly useful… at west michigan we had 2 seperate teams of people on different sides of the field, watching each match, ranking each robot, coming up with our own top 24 list and then ranking them again with drive team input and discussion between the groups… quite effective i should think = )
Most all the students on our team scout if they are in the stands. Usually we only have scouting left over from the practice matches because when the information would be useful it is still in the stands with whoever evaluated the teams.
Scouting I know is not really seen as being that important to a lot of new arrivals on my team but the veterans know how pertinent it is. If my coach asks me what a team does and I don’t know, I feel as if I have let my team down b/c of how important it is. Every round I tell my coach what to expect from a team and any interesting plays they have had thruout the day. Sometimes the people in the booth may never use the information but when they do it was all worth it. It may not seem like sitting in the stands with a laptop is very hard but it is a very stressful job as my successor on my team has found out. Scouting was especially useful this yr b/c we were in picking position in Galileo. The following is a picture of our database, we use Filemaker Pro.
