[robocup-humanoid] Rule proposals from the Hamburg Bit-Bots

[Nils Rokita]

Dear Humanoid Kid Size Teams,

during  the German Open and the Iran Open, the team Hamburg Bit-Bots
recognized  some rules, which should be discussed in the team leader
next meeting at  the end of the world championships in Brazil. In this
e-mail we want to  present you some thoughts and proposals beforehand to
encourage discussions within your team or with other teams before the
meeting.


Field:

With  the last change of rules, the goal was considerably broadend. Also the
penalty area was broadened to the side, but not to the front.


Pushing:

Because  the robots are now quite different in size, it is necessary to
prohibit  damage to other (smaller) robots. One cause of damage is the
running  against other robots. In the current rules there is just a
vague description of such a rule. In the SPL league there is a more
specific  rule to prohibit pushing of robots. In 4.10 it says:
"Pushing is a forceful contact with another robot, i.e., enough to
destabilize it, and is not allowed.
In the following, the cases when pushing occurs as well as exceptions
are specified in more detail.
The standard removal penalty will apply for pushing. The 4th time a team
is called for pushing in a half, the offending robot will be removed for
the remainder of the half. Subsequently for that half,
a robot from the team will be removed for every 2 pushing offenses
(i.e., the 6th time, 8th time, etc.). Note that this can result in all
five of a team’s robots being removed for the remainder of the
half if they are called for pushing twelve times in a half.  Pushing
offenses during the ready state are not counted as part of this removal
count (cf. Section  3.7).
If the ball moves significantly as the result of pushing, then it should be
replaced to where it was
at the time of the infringement."
Additionally,  there are some exceptions stated in section 4.10.1 to 4.10.2.
We support an adoption of this rule for the Humanoid Kid Size League not
only to treat the hardware more carefully but also to bring the development
of obstacle avoidance forward.

Maybe we should make more use off the rules in 12.4.1 and 14.4.2 (1, 5
and 6)
regarding pushing (free kick is a 30s removal penalty according to 12.4.7)


Field Size:

Larger robots are also stronger in shooting than the smaller ones. Although
the field is larger in size now, it is still possible for some robots to
play the ball from one goal area to the other. To encourage team play
instead of a goal-to-goal ping-pong we suggest to introduce a rule that a
goal can not be scored if the robot shooting the ball is located behind  the
midline. A similar rule can be found in Mid-Size-League.


Goalie "Throw-In":

With the current rules the implementation of a ball pickup is not
worthwhile for the goal keeper. The goal keeper may hold the ball for
not more than 6 seconds, which makes it nearly impossible to search for
a suitable position to throw the ball at. The risk of beeing judged for
 ball holding is much higher than the advantage of throwing the ball.
There are two possibilities to redesign the rule: First, the time can be
enlarged, either to a specific time (20-30 seconds) or to a reasonable
time that can be judged by the referee (according to the FIFA rule).
Another possibility is to adopt the 3.4 SPL rule:

"While within its penalty area, a goal keeper may touch the ball with
its arms  and/or hands.  If a  goal keeper is able to lift the ball off
of  the ground using its arms and/or hands (i. e. using at least one arm
or hand), and hold it there for at least 1 second, the ball will be
moved to one of the two intersections of a throw-in line and the
halfway  line.
Specifically, the ball will be moved to the intersection  point  closer
(regarding the angle) to the goal keeper at the moment  of  lifting. If
the goal keeper is almost aligned with the field’s  x-axis, the referee
should use the intersection point at which a  teammate is  closer at the
moment of lifting.
The robot is not required to lift the ball to a particular height in
order for the ball to be considered to be ‘lifted off of the ground’,
but lack of contact between the ball and ground must be clearly
recognizable by the head referee"

Maybe this rule can also applied if the goalie is throwing himself on
the ball and "hold" the ball on this way. Because if the goalie holds
the ball on the ground the other players can't do anything. In the real
football the goalie would perform a kickoff afterwards.


READY phase:

There  is currently no rule describing the time of READY phase. In fact,
the game controller has a timing for this and for this reason many
referees abort the self positioning after not more than 30 seconds. This
time periode is too short for the small robots to reach their position
on the larger field. There should be either a time stated in the rules
that is at least 45 seconds or the game controller should not count the
time down for the READY phase and leave the decision to the discretion
of the referee.

We are looking forward to get feedback of your teams and to discussions
about the rules.

Best regards,
Nils Rokita
(for team Hamburg Bit-Bots)

-- 
Nils Rokita
Hamburg Bit-Bots
Teamleader
http://bit-bots.de
+49 40 42883 2547 (Lab)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 534 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <https://mailman.cc.gatech.edu/pipermail/robocup-humanoid/attachments/20140630/20c1f4ff/attachment.bin>