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Scouting Retreat

January 5th, 2024

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Videos Plan

Part 1:

Split into groups, watch the videos

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Group 1 (History of FRC):

Timothy

Zayn

Andrew

Suk

Group 2 (Match Strategy):

Clay

Adit

Julia

Andi

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Group 3 (FRC Scouting Tips):

Gunhong

Narendra

Michael

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Part 2:

Watch the Strategic Design video, game Analysis from 11:27, and slides

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Part 3:

Watch the Karthik Video

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History of FRC

Team 1678: Citrus Circuits 2023 Fall Workshop

Common trends and unique elements from FRC games over the past 10 years, focusing on the strategies and robots that eventually proved successful.

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Group 1

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Match Strategy

Team 1678: Citrus Circuits 2023 Fall Workshop

We'll discuss devising match strategy with a focus on the broader perspective entire alliance. We'll also present about our general process of creating match strategies at competitions, utilizing our scouting system, coordinating with other teams, and communicating information from the stands to our pits.

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Group 2

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FRC Scouting Tips

First Updates Now: Roasts and Robots

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Group 3

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Part 1 Videos Discussion

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Strategic Design

Team 1678: Citrus Circuits 2023 Fall Workshop

Tips for designing effective robots and effectively using team resources.

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CITRUS CIRCUITS

1678

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Citrus Circuits strategy

Strategy Vocabulary

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Outline

1. Quals and Elims

  • Qualification
    • Randomly paired with teams in a generated match schedule
    • Play to seed first
      • Win
      • Bonus RPs
  • Playoff/Elimination
    • Play with alliance selected in serpentine draft
    • Play in double elimination matches to advance (two matches and you’re out!)
    • Play to win
      • Prioritize points
      • No more RPs

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2. Ranking & Seeding

  • Ranking/seeding
    • The rank where teams stand in compared to the rest of the teams
    • Ranked by highest average ranking point (with tiebreakers for same avg RPs)
    • Alliance selections: top 8 seeded teams become captains of alliances
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3. Ranking points

  • Used to measure rank of teams in a competition
  • Win: 2 RP
  • Lose: 0 RP
  • Tie: 1 RP
  • Bonus RP: +2 RP/bonus
    • Before 2016: 1 different bonus RP per game

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4. Robot Tiers

  • W-bot: winning robot
    • High scoring robot
    • Can support their alliance alone
    • Often takes on the more difficult roles of an alliance
    • Prioritizes RP (during quals)
    • Often scores 8+ game elements
  • M-Bot: mid robot
    • Average scoring robot
    • Often scores 4-6 game pieces
    • Intermediate between L-bot and H-Bot
  • L-Bot: loser robot
    • Inconsistent, low performing robot
    • Limited capabilities
    • Rely on other robots on their alliance
    • Scores 1-2 game elements
  • P-Bot: pancake

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5. Cycle

  • Amount of time between obtaining a game piece and scoring it
    • Includes any movement or action within this time frame
  • Consistent, smooth movements lead to accurate cycles

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6. OPR

  • Offensive Power Rating
  • Way to measure the average point contribution of any given team
    • Calculated using game scoring objectives
    • Uses the alliance score for each qualification match played
  • Not the best assessment of offensive ability
    • 1678 uses scouting data instead

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7. Elo Ranking

  • Ranking system created to calculate the relative skill levels of teams compared to others
    • Calculated assuming a zero-sum situation (such as games like chess)
    • Difference in ratings between the two teams playing predicts outcome
  • How it works
    • Rating represented by a number that increases or decreases depending on the outcome of games between rated teams
    • Difference between the ratings of players decides total number of points gained/lost

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8. ELO Ranking

  • Ranking system where each team is assigned a point value
  • Teams with higher points are expected to win match
    • Difference in rating between players predicts how much they should win by
  • If the team with higher rating wins, they gain a small number of points from other player
    • Expected to win
  • If the team with lower rating wins, they gain a much larger number of points
    • An ‘upset’ win
  • If the teams tie, the lower-rated player still gains a small number of points
    • Expected loss for lower-rated team
  • Self-correcting system

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9. Defense

Zayn: “BIG D”

  • Preventing the opposing team from carrying out an offensive action
  • Knocking
    • Driving into an opposing robot at high speed to push them away from their target
  • Pinning
    • Similar to knocking, but instead of physically knocking an opponent, the defender pushes against them to keep them from moving
  • Path Blocking
    • Positioning a robot in the way of an opponent, forcing them to change their path/drive around
    • Often positioned perpendicular so that they cannot be pushed

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10. Counter Defense

  • Defending an alliance partner from defender of opposing alliance
    • Allows alliance partner to score more points
    • Drivers must be careful to not interfere and block their own alliance partner
  • Relies on the same tactics as defense

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11. Alliance Captain

  • The highest-seeded team on an alliance
    • Selected the partners during alliance selections
  • The leader of the alliance
    • Holds the time-out card for the alliance
    • Allowed to decide if the alliance needs to play a backup robot
    • Gets final say on alliance decisions

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12. Drafting & Picklist

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  • First Pick
    • 1st pick of an alliance
    • Has the rarest skills, often a high level scoring robot whose abilities and autos compliment the captain
  • Second Pick
    • The second pick of an alliance
    • Often performs simpler scoring tasks or defense

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13. Drafting & Picklist

  • Third Pick (Champs only)
    • The third pick of an alliance
    • Often performs simpler scoring tasks or defense
    • May have different scoring and defensive capabilities than a 2nd pick
    • May be picked as a counter-robot
  • Do not Pick (DNP)
    • A team that does not perform well enough or is not compatible with our alliance strategy
    • Used to minimize the amount of teams we need to analyze at draft night

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14. Strategic Drafting

  • Scorching
    • Strategically inviting top seeded teams to an alliance with the intent of them denying
    • Prevents W-bots from partnering in alliance selections
    • Often done when a team is ranked higher than they should be or when an unknown team is seeded very high
  • The strongest opponent
    • Selecting the team that we do not want to play
    • Not always the most compatible robot with our alliance, but the one that has the best chance at defeating us

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15. Strategic Drafting

  • Selecting a counter-robot
    • Selecting a robot with specific capabilities to counter an alliance you expect to play
  • Strategic declining
    • When a captain-ranked team declines an alliance invitation to form their own alliance
    • Declined when a team believes they can form a stronger alliance

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Outline

Any questions?

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CITRUS CIRCUITS

1678

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Kickoff Week Plans

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The Game Manual

  • What are we looking for when we read it for the first time?

The Field

How to score

Ranking points

  • The first hour?

Ways to score

Penalties

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  • The next few hours?
    • Loopholes

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Day 1 Strategies

Know the rules

Know the game

XRC

LOOPHOLES

Previous games with similar mechanisms

No build!!!!!!!

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Kahoot Game

  • Scouting will make a kahoot game on kickoff based off the new game’s rules
    • Helps Scouting when doing the manual review on Kickoff Day
    • Helps other members of the team learn the basic rules better when they play it

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  • Vocab - “what is this game piece called?”
  • Ways of scoring, ranking points
  • All penalties
  • New things to the game

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Day 2 Strategies

  • Our strategy
  • Looking at previous games
    • Robot design AND patterns and strategy
    • How they did it
  • Simple mechanisms to do what we want to do in the most specific way
  • Steal cad models… THEFT IS BEST
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Week 1 Strategies

  • Prototype
  • SIMPLIFY SIMPLIFY SIMPLIFY
  • Look back on robot in 3 days
  • Watch day-by-day updates
  • Look at the forum for rule changes

Build Season → Address new rule changes at the beginning of each team meeting!

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Videos

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Effective FIRST Strategies for Design & Competition

Karthik Kanagasabapathy - 2023 Worlds Talk

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Karthik Notes

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Thoughts?

Why is this helpful for us?

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What are our limits? How can we tailor our strategy towards our limits.

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Remember: a great robot with a never-trained drive team is much worse than a mediocre robot with a well-trained driveteam.

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Lunch

https://www.firstinspires.org/resource-library/frc/competition-manual-qa-system

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Competition Season Plans

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Competition

Flow

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Creating This Year’s Flowchart & Schedule

  • Each type of Scouting will be added when we talk about them
  • Additional things will be added once we discuss all the types of scouting

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Discussion over each type of Scouting

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The Plan

Go Over Each Type Of Scouting

  • What do we want out of this type of scouting?
  • How do we want this type of scouting to be collected? (App, Paper, etc.)
    • How would it work?
    • Will we need more tablets to be able to do this type of scouting on the app?
  • Teaching
    • How do we teach people to collect this data?
  • Integration of Strategy
    • How do we analyze this data?
    • Should analyzing this data be done by the people collecting it or by having a separate group analyze
    • How do we teach people to analyze this data?
  • Group
    • How many people should know how to do this?
    • How many people should know how to analyze this?
  • Leaders
    • Who will lead the group of people in collecting data for this?
    • Who will lead the group of people in analyzing this data?
  • Flowchart
    • How does this fit into the data flow?
  • Schedule
    • Where does this fit into the schedule?

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Match Scouting

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What is Match Scouting?

  • Most common type of scouting
  • In the stands during competitions
  • Mostly collecting qualitative data on the scouting app

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What do we want out of Match Scouting?

Different skill set of each robot

Auto, teleop, endgame

Which “lane” they play in on the field (if applicable)

Robot’s specific skills

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Most specific data we can

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How do we want Match Scouting to be collected?

The App

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How will Match Scouting on the App work?

Sukhesh Demo

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How many tablets would we need for Match Scouting?

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How do we plan on teaching Match Scouting?

  • Practice matches might be a good way with much lower stakes
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  • Pre-Comp
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What does Match Scouting Data look like?

  • All the data is stored in a csv with mostly numbers
  • Later transferred to tableau for better analysis

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How do we analyze Match Scouting Data?

  • Look at the graphs
  • Visual Data
  • We need to make sure the data is used to help counter the strategies of teams we are playing

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Should we split collecting and analyzing Match Scouting into separate roles?

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How do we teach people how to analyze Match Scouting Data?

Shadow first then be allowed to analyze it alone

An experienced person can analyze and that analysis can be compared to that of the newer analyzer

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How many people should know how to Match Scout?

THE ENTIRE TEAM

THE ENTIRE TEAM

THE ENTIRE TEAM

THE ENTIRE TEAM

THE ENTIRE TEAM

THE ENTIRE TEAM

THE ENTIRE TEAM

THE ENTIRE TEAM

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How many people should know how to analyze Match Scouting Data?

All scouts with experience of 2+ years

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Who will lead the collection of Match Scouting Data?

Scouting Lead : Timmy

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Who will lead the analysis of Match Scouting Data?

Scouting Lead : Adit and Clay

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Add Match Scouting and Match Scouting Analysis to the flowchart

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Add Match Scouting and Match Scouting Analysis to the schedule

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What is Pit Scouting?

Pit scouting is all about getting information other teams' robots and their capabilities.

Pit scouting involves visiting the pits of various teams to observe their robots up close and ask questions. Scouting teams often use scouting sheets or electronic apps to record information such as…

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Additional Things to Discuss for Match Scouting

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Pit Scouting

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CREDITS: This presentation template was created by Slideshow, including icons by Flaticon, infographics & images by Freepik and illustrations by Stories

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What do we want out of Pit Scouting?

Drive train: swerve/tank/other PICS OF ROBOT

What's broken???

What scoring?

How scoring?

Is the team using Pneumatics

Drive team experience…

Safety?

Where is the center of gravity(Will it tip)

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How do we want Pit Scouting to be collected?

On the tablets

The APP:

Make the template with sukesh code

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  • Dropdowns
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How will Pit Scouting on the app/paper work?

Make it based off of the template

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If Pit Scouting on the App, how many tablets would we need?

8 tablets (4 groups of 2, everyone has a tablet)

One person has the app pulled up, the other person has the camera

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How do we plan on teaching Pit Scouting?

Shadowing:

New pit scouter takes the photos

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What does Pit Scouting Data look like?

Tableau

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How do we analyze Pit Scouting Data?

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Should we split collecting and analyzing Pit Scouting Data into 2 separate roles?

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How do we teach people to analyze Pit Scouting Data?

Same way as match scouting

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How many people should know how to Pit Scout?

12-15 People in Scouting

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How many people should know how to analyze Pit Scouting Data?

3-5

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Who will lead the collection of Pit Scouting Data?

Timothy

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Who will lead the analysis of Pit Scouting Data?

Adit and Clay

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Add Pit Scouting and Pit Scouting Analysis to the flowchart

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Add Pit Scouting and Pit Scouting analysis to the schedule

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Additional things to discuss for Pit Scouting

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Pre-Comp Scouting

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What is Pre-Comp Scouting?

Getting data before the competition

Helps to learn things about tems

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What do we want out of Pre-Comp Scouting?

General idea of teams capabilities

Categorize teams into different tiers

Have people know things about the robots at competitions

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How do we want Pre-Comp Scouting to be collected?

Google Sheets

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How do we plan on teaching Pre-Comp Scouting?

Throw them into it

  • Low Stakes

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What does Pre-Comp Scouting Data look like?

Sheets and colors

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How do we use pre-comp data at our competitions?

Gives us a general idea and categories

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Should we split collecting and analyzing Pre-Comp data into 2 roles?

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No

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How many people should know how to Pre-Comp Scout?

Everyone in scouting

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Who will lead Pre-Comp Scouting?

Andrew & Naren

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Add Pre-Comp Scouting and Pre-Comp Scouting Analysis to the flowchart

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Add Pre-Comp Scouting and Pre-Comp Scouting Analysis to the schedule

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Additional things to discuss about Pre-Comp Scouting

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Alliance Scouting

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What is Alliance Scouting?

Alliance Scouting is the scouting done during the playoffs.

  • Focus on alliance rather than team
  • Helps determine optimal counter-strategies

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What do we want out of Alliance Scouting?

Counter-Strategies

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How do we want Alliance Scouting data to be collected?

Tablets

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How will Alliance Scouting work?

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How will Alliance Scouting Groups work?

Group size (2-3 ppl)

Who makes up each group (At least 1 veteran in each group)

Do we alliance scout our own group? (Yes)

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If using tablets, how many will we need for Alliance Scouting?

8

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How do we plan on teaching Alliance Scouting?

Shadow

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What does Alliance Scouting data look like?

Verbal Info

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How do we analyze Alliance Scouting data?

See their strategies

Find a way to counter the strategy

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Should we split collection and analysis of Alliance Scouting data into separate roles?

No

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How do we teach people to analyze Alliance Scouting data?

Same with collection

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How many people should know how to alliance scout?

Everyone in scouting

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How many people should know how to analyze Alliance Scouting data?

Everyone in scouting

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Who will lead the collection of Alliance Scouting data?

TImothy

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Who will lead the analysis of Alliance Scouting Data?

Timothy

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Add Alliance Scouting & Analysis to the flowchart

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Add Alliance Scouting & Analysis to the schedule

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Additional things to discuss about Alliance Scouting

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Practice Match Scouting

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What is Practice Match Scouting?

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What do we want out of Practice Match Scouting?

What other robots can score

Auto

How well their mechanisms work

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How do we want Practice Match Scouting to be collected?

Tablets

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How will Practice Match Scouting Work?

People watch the practice matches

Less things to look at compared to match scouting

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If we have Practice Match Scouting on the tablets, how many do we need?

At least 2

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How do we plan on teaching Practice Match Scouting?

Explain how it works

Practice before comp

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What does Practice Match Scouting data look like?

Tableau

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How do we analyze Practice Match Scouting data?

People analyze the tableau

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Should we split collecting and analyzing Practice Match Scouting data into separate roles?

Yes

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How do we teach people to analyze Practice Match Scouting data?

Practice beforehand

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How many people should know Practice Match Scouting?

4-8

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How many people should know how to analyze Practice Match Scouting data?

2-4

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Who will lead the collection of Practice Match Scouting Data?

Michael

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Who will lead the analysis of Practice Match Scouting data?

Michael

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Add Practice Match Scouting and Analysis to the flowchart

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Add Practice Match Scouting and Analysis to the schedule

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Additional Things to discuss about Practice Match Scouting

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Drive Team Scouting

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What is Drive Team Scouting?

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Why did we get rid of Drive Team Scouting in the past?

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What do we want out of Drive Team Scouting?

How well other teams work with you

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How do we want Drive Team Scouting to be collected?

By Drive Team

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How will Drive Team Scouting work?

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Will we need tablets for Drive Team Scouting? If so, how many?

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How do we plan on teaching Drive Team Scouting?

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What does Drive Team Scouting look like?

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How do we analyze Drive Team Scouting data?

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Should we split Drive Team Scouting data collection and analysis into 2 separate roles?

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How do we teach people to analyze Drive Team Scouting data?

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How many people should know how to Drive Team scout?

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How many people should know how to analyze Drive Team scouting data?

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Who will lead the collection of Drive Team Scouting data?

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Who will lead the analysis of Drive Team Scouting data?

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Add Drive Team scouting and analysis to the flowchart

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Add Drive Team Scouting & Analysis to the schedule

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Additional things to discuss about Drive Team Scouting

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Add additional things to the flowchart

Drive Team

Alliance Rep

Whatever we think should be on the flowchart

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Add additional things to the schedule

Picklist Creation

Alliance Selection

Whatever we feel like

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Anything else to discuss?

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https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lgT7___NQAZaBmw2SGNklI_t_unGlKnn

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