Scouting is how the the team determines the best strategy to play our matches, and who are the best teams to pick during Alliance Selection.
Types of Scouting
Scouting on the team is broken into 4 different types of scouting: Pre scouting, pit scouting, match scouting, and super scouts.
Pre Scouting
Pre scouting is done before the team goes to an event. Team members look at the other teams attending our upcoming event. Team’s are evaluated based on their reveal videos or past events that season to get an idea of what they will be able to do at the upcoming event. This data is used for early qualification matches before the team’s scouting data becomes reliable.
Pit Scouting
Pit scouting is done during the practice portion of a tournament. Selected team members go to each team’s pit to determine physical statistics about the robot like weight and what tasks the robot can accomplish. They also take a photo of each robot for reference during the scouting meeting.
Match Scouting
Match scouting is the core of the team’s scouting efforts. 1 to 2 students watch each robot in every match, recording the quantitative (numerical) scoring information about the robot. These scouts also leave comments about the robot they watched, giving members at the scouting meeting a better understanding of the match overall. This scouting is done on team tablets, using an in-house developed app.
Super Scouts
Super scouts are senior students and alumni/mentors who collect notes on robots over the course of the event. These members are looking for details that won’t appear in the numbers, and instead looking at team characteristics like defense ability and ways they can be interrupted. This data is added to the match scouting data to give a complete picture of each robot.
Uses of Scouting Data
Match Strategy
Match strategy is the way that the team plays each match to maximize the ranking points that can be earned by the team. Based on all the data the team has, the drive coach determines the best way to play the match. The drive coach works with the other drive teams to create a strategy for the alliance in the match, and relays the role that the team will be playing to the other members of the drive team.
Alliance Selection
The night before alliance selection, select students and mentors/alumni have a meeting using all the data collected by the team to determine the best partners to select during Alliance Selection. The members in the meetings work to create two lists, a first pick list and a second pick list, ranking each robot that will be available to be picked in each round for who well they would work with our team. This group also works to determine the strategy the playoff alliance would use depending on which robots are on our alliance.