Hey everyone,
Just curious if anyone has an an example of their paper scouting sheets that they use at the competition? Any specifically tailored to Skyrise?
Also, any scouting advice from pro-scouts out there?
Thanks!
Pardon my ignorance, as I am on a VEX U team and was never involved in VEX in high school, but are you telling me that teams actually scout out people for their team? Is it like trying to recruit them to their high school or just their team? Apologizes if these questions seem silly, I just had no idea there was something like this for VEX teams comparable to something like football.
EDIT: Or am I just not as intelligent as I think and you are talking about scouting out opponents?
I believe he’s talking about scouting out opponents.
Whelp, I’ve been so engrossed in college sports now that I have totally lost meaning of certain words. 
Thanks for clearing that up!
We just have a memeber dedicated to scouting.
See if they have autonomous
See how many points they get in autonomous
Just judge their robot: study them quickly, try to find faults and their pros of the design. Watch them compete, see if they know how to drive or if they just built it and barely know how to use it.
You can use the vex scouter app and use it also.
Each year, my scouting sheets are broken up into three sections, pre-competition, pre-qualifications, and competition scouting.
This year, the pre-scouting section contains their average score in qualifications at their last competition, their high score in qualifications, their current robot skills score, and their current programming skills score. This scouting can be researched and done before the actual competition
The pre-qualification section contains the number of drivetrain motors, max goal height, whether they can do skyrises, and a miscellaneous section for special traits (exceptionally high auto, turntable, high cube capacity, driver practice, wall-bot/multi-bot, etc.), skyrise tile autonomous value, and post tile autonomous value. This should be done before actual qualifications start
Then the competition section contains the number of cubes the team scores per match and the number of skyrises they score per match. Furthermore, values they gave from autonomous prior should have uncertainty based on their success and whether there’s a defensive or strategic aspect to it as well.
What are team likes to look for is:
-How many skyrise sections can they build.
-How many cubes can they stack on the skyrise sections.
-What size post can they reach, if any.
-How many points can they get in autonomous.
-On a scale of 1-10 how well their robot would work with us in a match (compatibility)
-What is their preferred starting tile during autonomous.
-How fast is their robot and how fast is their lifting mechanism.
Things to avoid are asking these questions directly to teams about their robot because people will lie and tell you false information. Some questions like “what starting tile do you prefer?” is an okay question to ask to a team, but questions like, “how many skyrise sections can you stack?” is not a good question to ask a team. When scouting, use common sense. The best way to scout is to be observant. Just sit in the bleachers and observe what the robot does yourself. Another bad thing to do is scout robots on the practice field! First of all, you’ll just be in the way, and second, when people practice, your not going to get accurate info, since it is just practice. Before alliance selection, we don’t just look for the highest ranked robot, we want a robot that will work well with us. It is always a good idea to pick a team that you know well, such as another team from your organization or club. If you know what your alliance does, you will be better prepared during a match.
I like to keep track of teams across multiple tournaments, since most competitions show a lot of familiar faces and robots. Often times you can make strategic decisions and predictions just by seeing who’s on the registration list for the next competition.
We’re in a very ideal spot for this since we’re in the middle of our state. We compete on both sides of the state and we can paint a pretty good picture of what the state championship is going to look like before we get there.
It’s also a good idea to be friendly to teams in your region. That way, if you have a bad day in qualifications, you can call on friends to ensure you get picked onto a good alliance.
Watching teams’ matches is the best way to gauge a team’s ability. Talking with them about strategy and about their robot is a good way to gauge how adaptive a team is, and how willing they would be to work with you.
If you have a iOS device their is a app called robo notes and it is really useful but only will work for the 2014-2015 game!!
Did you develop this app?
Is it also on android?
If you did develop it and it is not for Android, would it be possible for you to send me the source code so I could try to replicate it?