[robocup-humanoid] RoboCup HL 2017 rule proposal (up for discussion until 2017-01-31)

[Maike Paetzel]

Dear RoboCup Humanoid Teams,

this year we want to make the process of defining the rule set for the 
2017 rule book more open and give the teams the chance to participate in 
the discussion process. The Technical Committee prepared a draft during 
the last month with the suggested rule changes. The draft is based on 
the FIFA rule book, converted to LaTeX as the team leader requested 
during the 2016 team leader meeting. The rule changes are mostly the 
ones that were discussed and agreed upon during the last years team 
leader meeting. In addition, we considered the document with comments 
that was provided by teams Baset, NimbRo and Rhoban. The draft is 
attached to this email and uploaded to the robocuphumanoid website. In 
addition and as requested by the team leaders, we created a github 
repository and uploaded the rule sources to this account:
https://github.com/RoboCup-Humanoid-TC/Rules
In the future, github will easily allow to follow the changes in the 
rules over the years in addition to the marked changes that are 
provided. We are also planning to move the GameController sources to 
this new github account as soon as the changes for the new rule book 
have been applied.

As requested by the team leaders, we tried to highlight all rule changes 
in the new rule book. Please note that the marked rule changes are the 
intended rule changes in the content - due to the conversion to the FIFA 
laws, the wording of other rules might have changed as well. However, 
all parts of the rule book that are not marked should not contain 
content changes.

The process for the discussion is as follows: As teams Baset, NimbRo and 
Rhoban suggested, a forum was set up for the discussion process. The 
forum is officially supported by the RoboCup Federation and it is 
supposed to be the new official forum for the humanoid league. It cannot 
only be used for discussions about the rules, it should also emphasize 
the exchange of ideas between the teams in hardware, software and 
organization.
The forum can be found here: https://hl.forum.robocup.org/
The forum can already be used, but some administrative changes will be 
carried out during the next days. Especially, the upload of images that 
is currently broken will be fixed soon. Apart from the image upload, the 
forum is fully functioning and can be used by the teams to discuss the 
rule changes immediately. Please post your discussion contributions in 
the category https://hl.forum.robocup.org/c/rules/rules

The Technical Committee will try to take part in the forum discussions 
as well. The discussion phase ends 2017-01-31. The contributions and 
discussions up to then will be reviewed by the Technical Committee and - 
in case of mixed opinions about a topic - the Technical Committee will 
vote on issues brought up. We hope to have the final rule book ready by 
mid February 2017.

The change of the rule format to fit the FIFA rules was not an easy 
process. Even though the Technical Committee reviewed the rules multiple 
times, there might still be unintended changes of rule content in the 
rules. When reviewing the new rule book, I would therefore kindly ask 
you to take a look at last years rule book again and see if (i) rules 
are missing in the new rule book compared to last year, (ii) the wording 
of the FIFA rules changes the content of the RoboCup rules without being 
marked in magenta in the rules and (iii) the format of the rules is 
broken somewhere or there are spelling mistakes. Please also note those 
errors in the forum.

We are very interested in reading your opinions about the rule changes 
to make the new rules as good and flawless as possible. So please use 
this opportunity and participate in the forum discussions.

Cheers,
Maike (for the RoboCup Humanoid Technical Committee)

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