[robocup-humanoid] RoboCup Humanoid League Rule Discussion

[Remi Fabre]

Dear TCs, OCs and fellow RoboCup humanoid league teams,

Here are some thoughts/propositions concerning the rules discussion.

We feel the level of difficulty of the current rules has increased too fast and it affects the quality of the games played.

1) Magnetometer and localization
- Breaking the symmetry is a very hard task and we feel we're not ready for it. A solution would be to put asymmetrical markers on the field.
- Will the white advertisements always be present around the field? They could be used as the asymmetrical markers and defined in the rules (position, size, shape).

2) Free kicks
While the discussion around the free kicks is interesting, very few fouls, if any, are actually sanctioned. In the current state of the competition, sanctioning all the fouls would make the games stop very often. If a change in the foul policy is to be made, it must be very clearly stated.

3) Mediums of Transmission
Once an Ethernet cable is connected to a robot, there is no practical way to control what type of information is communicated. The main problem is that a serviced robot can communicate with the playing robots as he goes back in play, thus making it possible to broadcast anything. Here is a proposition :
a) The is no restriction on the type of information a serviced robot can receive from its team (position of the robots, position of the ball, strategy, etc)
b) A serviced robot is not allowed to communicate with the other robots in any way
c) Once the team has finished communicating with the robot, the robot must remain in service status for a fixed period (1 minute ?). During this period it is forbidden to communicate with the robot in any way and the robot can't communicate either.
This way when the robot is able to communicate with the other robots, dynamic information such as ball/players positions would be stale. And if the information is not stale because the ball didn't move for a whole minute, then why not let this be a way to unblock the situation?
How to make sure a robot is not communicating illegally is another subject, but recording the wifi traffic in case a complaint arises is a cheap first step.

4) Groups
This year the groups were made by separating the 2 first seeds of the previous year and setting the other teams in a random fashion. As a result, first and third place teams of last year were in the same group in the kid-size competition. The groups could rather be done with the following classic method :
- The teams are sorted using their ranking in the last year's competition. New teams come in last.
- Equally seeded teams are randomly sorted among themselves (e.g teams that lost in the quarter finals)
- The groups are created as follows with each team's index (snake pattern) :
Group 1 | Group 2 | ... | Group k
1       | 2       | ... | k
2k      | 2k-1    | ... | k+1
2k+1    | 2k+2    | ... | 3k

5) Stability of the rules
Ideally, the final version of the rules should have detailed specifications of the field and the ball :
- Grass reference
- Goal's construction
- White lines paint reference
- Immediate known surroundings of the field.
This year, the final ball was known a few days before the competition. Upon arrival, we discovered the rectangular advertisements that were in contact with the field. Also, white lines were not reliable in Hefei, so we decided not to use them this year, yet they stayed visible longer. Did the paint change? How reliable will the lines be in the next Robocups?
If the goal is to put and emphasis on the ability of the teams to adapt to unforeseen changes, it should be clearly specified in the rules. While we do like the "coding competition" aspect of the Robocup, we believe that the added difficulty is counter productive in the current state of the competition.


Best regards,

Rémi Fabre
Team Rhoban


Le 26/07/2016 06:14, Esfandiar Bamdad :
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> Dear TCs, OCs and fellow RoboCup humanoid league teams,
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> As we all know, big changes are coming to the humanoid league in terms of the rules. Naturally, this is something we should embrace, to drive the
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> league forward, and we should try to make the rules as great as possible for next year. This email has been triggered by the culmination of a successful
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> RoboCup in Leipzig, and the recent dissemination of the meeting minutes from the RoboCup rule discussion meeting (you can find it in the attached "RCHL-2016-RuleDiscussion-Minutes.pdf"), in addition to the initial proposed rules rewrite for 2016.
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> The rules are quite important because they to some degree decide the future direction of the entire league, so some open discussion on the matter in our opinion is highly merited.
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> We would strongly encourage all teams to spend some time and read the attached document ("RCHLRuleDiscussion.pdf"), which contains viewpoints and concerns regarding the proposed rule changes for next year's RoboCup.
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> The document was prepared, and is equally supported by all three author teams.
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> Baset Adult-Size
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> NimbRo TeenSize
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> Rhoban Football Club (KidSize)
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> Best Regards,
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> Esfandiar Bamdad
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> LTC 2017
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> ebamdad at basetp.com
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