Pit Scouting vs Match Scouting

Two activities, two questions

Scouting splits into two complementary activities.

Pit scouting means visiting each team in their pit to learn what their robot is designed to do. A pit scout asks questions and takes a photo of the robot. Typical questions:

• What can you score, and where? (e.g., which locations or levels)
• What does your autonomous routine do? How many do you have?
• What is your endgame capability?
• What is your drivetrain (tank, swerve, mecanum)?
• Any known reliability issues or things you are still fixing?

Pit scouting is fast to collect (you can cover all ~30-40 teams in the first hour or two of an event) and great for early-season events where there is little match data yet. Its weakness: it captures claims and intentions , not proof. Teams are optimistic about their robots, and a robot that “can” do something may rarely pull it off in a real match.

Match scouting means watching robots during actual qualification matches and recording what they really do: pieces scored, cycle times, scoring locations, penalties, endgame, and whether they broke down. The standard approach is to run one device per robot so all six robots on the field are scouted every match (a red alliance and a blue alliance of three robots each); a common refinement is two scouts per device, so one calls out the action and one records. Match scouting is your source of truth because it measures performance under real pressure, including defense.

How they work together

| Pit scouting| Match scouting
—|—|—
Question answered| What can the robot do?| What did the robot do?
When| Start of event, between matches| Every qualification match
Data type| Capability, specs, photo| Performance, counts, reliability
Strength| Fast, available before matches| Accurate, proves consistency
Weakness| Optimistic, unverified| Needs many matches to stabilize

Use pit scouting to form hypotheses (“Team 4 says they can do the high-value endgame”) and match scouting to confirm or reject them (“…but they have only completed it once in eight matches”). On picklists, match data should usually outweigh pit claims.

Practical tips

• Photograph every robot during pit scouting. A picture jogs memory during alliance selection far better than text.
• Be polite and quick. Pit crews are busy. Have a fixed, short question list.
• Assign one scout per robot in match scouting and rotate so nobody loses focus. Watching one robot for an entire match is the single most important discipline.
• Note no-shows and breakdowns. A robot that misses matches or sits disabled is a reliability red flag your point averages might hide.

Many teams also do super-scouting : an experienced scout or strategist watches whole matches for big-picture qualitative judgments (driver skill, defense quality, how a robot performs under pressure) to supplement the per-robot data.

Key takeaways

• Pit scouting captures capability and intent; match scouting captures verified, real-match performance.
• Run match scouting with one device per robot (six robots per match), ideally two scouts per device.
• Use pit data to form hypotheses and match data to confirm them; weight match data more heavily on picklists.

This lesson was adapted from learnfrc.com.