[robocup-humanoid] Questions and comments regarding the Game Controller

[Dirk Thomas]

Hi Alejandro,

 > -- I note discrepancies in the number of players considered, the current rules talks of teams of size 3 (kid) and 2 (teen), but the game considers
 > 5 and 3 players, by the way I think that  there  should be a bound on the number of robots.

The number matches with the sum of field players and allowed substitutions.
Therefore you can uniquely identify each roboter which might be on the field e.g. in order to penalize a specific robot.


 > -- The -numplayer option seem to have a mind of his own, the default seems to depend on the league, since it overrides the -numplayer setting.

This option is no more used - the number is always defined by the rulebook of the selected league.
I have removed the option from the doc.


 > -- The default league seem the standard platform not the kidsize.

Right, this is wrongly documented.
I have fixed that in latest SVN.


 > -- the following penalties are not found in the rule book
 >       request for pickup 30s (looks like incapable player,but ..
 >       request for service 60s (looks like temporal absence, but the time is 30s)
 >       upgrade pickup to service +30s

These penalties have been applied in the 2010 RoboCup (at least in KidSize league).
If they are not described in the rule book, it should be updated there if the rules should be applied this year again.


 > -- the manual kickoff states 30s
 > -- The one minute given the Controller after the READY signal is not in the rule book, but there is in the rulebook a 10s between the SET and the PLAY signals, for autostart. The automatic change 
to SET, after one minute, fails.

These time interval of the game controller are NOT mandatory.
It's up to the referee to determine when to switch from READY to SET or from SET to PLAY.
Therefore the GameController never automatically switches states


 > -- The automata, included in the documentation, is not complete since it does not included the penalty kicks. One thing that is not clear to me is how to handle  state penalty kick since not 
included in the automata show (it might be on the playing state, but then the rule book does not mark the READY SET PLAY sequence for each penalty). It does mark this sequence for a drop-ball, but 
then again this state in not in the automata, in this case is more easily to fuse to the playing state.

The GameController does not model anything for penalty kicks (still it can be used to signal Ready, Set, Play in these cases).
The automata only describes the state during normal game play.


 > -- the Time Out Done launches a 30s timer

I don't know why this is the case.
If this is not intentional it should be removed.


 > -- the Game Controller .h file defines a structure RoboCupGameControllerReturnData. What is the purpose of this structure.

This can be used to read the data from broadcasted from the GameController into a semantic structure.


 > -- the automata included in the documentation has the Initial, Ready, Set, Playing, Penalized and Finished states. The Game Controller has
 > the Initial, Ready, Set, Play, Finish, Out By Cyan, Out By Magenta, Cyan KickOff, Magenta KickOff and DropBall. What is the correct use

The robot-independent game state is described by: "Initial", "Ready", "Set", "Play", "Finish".
Each robot can be "Penalized" individually.
The other states are additional information to decide about the concrete situation.


 > -- during penalty kick, I dont understand that the timer continues to run after reaching 0s

The timer in the game controller is NOT mandatory.
It's up to the referee to determine when the penaly is over.


 > -- the rule book, on page 15, second paragraph, says the source code is open, but the zip file does not contain the source code.

The GameController is hosted on sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/robocupgc/


 > -- the Time Out Done switches the state to READY, but the play timer continues to run

As far as i know this is you it is interpreted. As soon as the time out is over the play timer continues.


Best regards,
Dirk

-- 

Dr.-Ing. Dirk Thomas                E-Mail: dthomas at sim.tu-darmstadt.de
Simulation, Systems Optimization    Phone:  ++49 (0) 6151-16-4722
and Robotics Group (SIM)            Mobil:  ++49 (0) 176-231 241 56
Technische Universitaet Darmstadt   http://www.sim.tu-darmstadt.de
Hochschulstr. 10                    D-64289 Darmstadt, Germany