[robocup-humanoid] Clarification requested on the KidSize 10cm Ball

[Marcell Missura]

Hello RoboCuppers!

I have compiled a video comparing the Soft Franklin ball with the best looking alternative that was suggested here on this list: the Jolly Pet Bounce-n-Play Vanilla Scented dog toy. Thank you Sean, for the research. You can see the video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl3LRvMjUvw

Daniel has produced some material comparing the Soft Franklin with the old ball. You can find it here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yyi8tua66xtaac6/2vlTD_0fbR

Against common belief, the Soft Franklin is not a soft/spongy massage ball. It's inflatable, it rolls nicely, and it has good availability. We may not specify the KidSize ball in the rules more precisely than an "orange ball with 10 cm diameter", but with a very high probability, the Soft Franklin will be used as the official ball in João Pessoa.

The TC is grateful for the comments on the rules and the road map so far. The increase of the field size in particular has been voted on in one of the team leader meetings in Eindhoven and the majority of the KidSize team leaders expressed that they are ready to move on to a larger field. The new size restrictions with overlaps, a larger ball, and a larger field size is meant to encourage the construction of robots of a more adequate size and to encourage more passing in games. I personally think that it's important to keep changing our environment towards a more realistic FIFA soccer field. The long term road map helps us to keep in mind what changes we need to make in the future in order to be able to play games against a human team on a real FIFA soccer field well before the year 2050. On the other hand, after relatively large changes every five years, we intend to keep the size restrictions on the field, ball, and robots fixed in order to allow time to adjust to the new situation. As we will sooner or later also have to increase the number of players, and larger robots in larger numbers cost a lot more money, we should focus our discussions in João Pessoa on the topic of mixed teams.


best regards
Marcell Missura
member of the TC