[robocup-humanoid] [6] Rule Suggestion: Technical Challenges I

[Oskar von Stryk]

Hi Steffen,

Thanks a lot for all your comments on different rule details!
I agree with most of your comments. I only comment on the ones
with which I do not agree.


Robots participating in the technical challenge must be sufficiently 
versatile. The current rule requires that they must be used
in a soccer game before and this requires a number of basic skills.

Several years ago very specialized robots could be used,
e.g., in penalty kick competition a robot was used by a team which
could only stand with extremely wide spread legs blocking the goal
but could not walk nor stand up.

Such cases of overfitting robots to very special rule settings
are not possible anymore with the current rules (to my opinion).

All robots used in the technical challenge must be able to play soccer
and this must be demonstrated in the games before.
But it does not make sense to require also that all robots
of a team must be able to solve all technical challenges.
It is also practically not possible to check that.

In the case of grabbing and throwing a ball it is good that
different solutions to the problem are developed, evaluated
and improved.

Requiring all robots of a team to have the same, provisional and 
intermediate solution for grabbing a ball would trather hinder development
than promote it.

In the current soccer rule settings only a goal keeper can really profit
from using its hand in a game for grabbing and throwing a ball.
It is the only current way to realize 3D motion of the ball!

If your robot can grab and throw the ball realiably you should
try to incorporate this in your goal keeper to get advantage
in the soccer games.

Field players will only need to use their hands if the
current throw-in procedure with ball replacement and continuous
play will be replaced by a "real" throw-in procedure.

With best regards,
Oskar von Stryk

On Tue, 22 Dec 2009, Steffen Heinrich wrote:

> Hi,
>
> we would like to add 3 small rule suggestions to this discussion.
>
> ** Robots participating in technical challenges **
>
> Seeing Technical Challenges as way to facilitate new and tough tasks
> which are going to be incorporated in regular matches of the upcoming
> RoboCup, more precise rules towards the modifications of the robots
> would improve this process.
>
> Every robot of a team should be able to solve a challenge, not only
> the modified ones or the modifications should be installed on every
> robot at the beginning of the RoboCup and should be used during the
> matches as well.
> Otherwise the current rules will lead to modifications tailored to
> specific challenges which are useless in real match situations.
> Older challenges like fast walking, obstacle avoidance or passing showed
> that its possible to integrate the tasks of Technical Challenges into
> real matches without any special modifications of the robots.
>
>
> Regards
> Steffen Heinrich
>
> FUmanoids
> Freie Universität Berlin
>
>