[robocup-humanoid] Humanoid League Long Term Roadmap (1st Draft)

[Reinhard Gerndt]

Dear All,

first I would like to thank the TC for preparing a base for further discussion. 

However, I think the proposed technical roadmap does not consider the whole picture, as for example Phil pointed out. 

The two major aspects that puzzle me are:

What is the role of the humanoid league within the RoboCup family? Are we the only ones to fulfill the dream of the RoboCup community, the 2050 game, and serve as a rational for the 'playground' the other leagues get? If we are asked to 'close' the kid-size, why not close mid-size league, SPL and simulation as well? They will be able to play the 2050 game as good or bad as our kid size. If there is a reason to keep the other leagues, the same reason should apply to a humanoid kid size.

Following the proposed technical roadmap, I expect there will be a point in time sooner or later, when it will be impossible for an individual team / university to support a whole team of robot players. What will be the new organizational structure / framework?  Will teams only bring one robot and have them play together with other robots? The structure of the RoboCup humanoid league would then turn into a technical workshop. This would for sure helpful to reach the goal, but will change the public appearance of our league dramatically. And even if we do so, we probably need an additional structure to foster robotics development and education at a low entry point. Human soccer leagues may serve as an example. Why should this be so very much different in robotic soccer?

I would like to support Phil's proposal to seriously consider following two threads in the humanoid league:
1. Some (low entry) (kid-size) league, suitable for teams with a low budget, undergraduate students and so on, to train students and early stage researchers, improve awareness, attract attention and entertain the public.
2. A '2050 workshop / league' to target the 2050 game with the proposed roadmap and new organizational scheme to account for the roadmap. 

It appears, we are at a turning point now. We may decide (not sure if the decision is on us) to turn the league into a project for a few to tackle a specific problem or to keep it as a major event, where a large number of people meet, or hopefully both.  

Regards

Reinhard Gerndt

Am 13.01.2014 um 21:48 schrieb soroush sadeghnejad:

> Dear HL teams,
> 
> Up on the previous announcement of HL Technical Committee, the RoboCup
> Federation called for a significant push in the rules towards the 2050
> goal. Based on the ideas and discussions at the team leader meeting in
> Eindhoven during RoboCup 2013, the Technical Committee has tried to propose
> a long term road map for Humanoid League for reaching to this goal.
> 
> The RoboCup Soccer Humanoid League roadmap has been constituted in the
> year 2014 to lay out a rough plan of milestones that the Humanoid League
> would have to reach on the way to the 2050 goal: to defeat the human
> world champion soccer team in a fair game according to the FIFA rules.
> 
> The idea of the roadmap is to define large changes to the environment
> and the gameplay, which take effect every five years to encourage a
> steady long term development of the league. For each five year min robot
> height, filed length, max number of players in each team and also duration
> of play per half have been proposed. The currently three size classes will
> successively be reduced to two and finally one as the minimum robot heights
> will be increased over the years. The planned technical challenges for this
> duration have come at the end of each five years.
> 
> The Technical Committee has uploaded the first roadmap draft for the
> RoboCup
> Humanoid League:
> http://www.tzi.de/humanoid/bin/internal/view/Website/Downloads.
> 
> We invite everybody to discuss about this proposal, to make additional
> suggestions and give feedback. Only in this way, the long term roadmap will
> be
> able to address all teams' new ideas and suggestions. Please provide
> feedback
> via the HL mailing list.
> 
> Sent on behalf of the
> Humanoid League Technical Committee
> Carlos Acosta, Jacky Baltes, Sven Behnke, Luis F. Lupian,
> Marcell Missura, Soroush Sadeghnejad and Daniel Seifert
> _______________________________________________
> robocup-humanoid mailing list
> robocup-humanoid at cc.gatech.edu
> https://mailman.cc.gatech.edu/mailman/listinfo/robocup-humanoid



---
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Reinhard Gerndt
Ostfalia Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften 
- Fachhochschule Braunschweig/Wolfenbüttel -
Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences
Fakultät Informatik - Computer Science Department
Salzdahlumer Str. 46-48
38302 Wolfenbüttel, Germany

Tel.: +49 (0) 5331 939 32120 / 31005
FAX: +49 (0) 5331 939 31004
E-Mail: r.gerndt at ostfalia.de
Web: www.ostfalia.de
http://public.ostfalia.de/~gerndt

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