[robocup-humanoid] Information about the Drop-In procedure for Montreal

[Maike Paetzel]

Dear Humanoid Teams,


in the end of last year's RoboCup, the league expressed the desire that the Drop-In teams should be announced earlier in advance so teams have the possibility to make arrangements within the teams beforehand. The team registration for RoboCup closes this Friday (May 18th), so the Technical Committee will work on the Drop-In seeding during the weekend. We plan to announce the Drop-In teams on May 22nd.


Here are some organizational information in the meantime: Every competing team will play five to six games. With the current number of registrations, this leads to 12 Drop-In games in KidSize, 6 in TeenSize and 9 in AdultSize. However, this may change with the final number of registrations. Even though all teams must be registered by Friday, we might have teams not showing up to the competition (for example due to Visa problems). In this case, we still want to ensure a fair game, meaning that both Drop-In teams can play with the same number of players. We will therefore follow the following procedure: We will announce the teams forming a Drop-In team together in an ordered fashion with a number assigned to each team. Here is an example:

Team blue: 1) TeamA, 2) TeamB, 3) TeamC, 4) TeamD, 5) TeamE

Team red: 1) TeamF, 2) TeamG, 3) TeamH, 4) TeamI, 5) TeamJ

If TeamB doesn't show up, the blue team does only have four robots competing. Therefore, the team with the highest number in team red (in this case TeamJ) will not play in this game. If both TeamB and TeamC don't show up, TeamI and TeamJ will not play. The higher the number of a team, the more likely it is that they will not play if the other team is not complete. However, we hope that this occurs rarely and that most teams will be able to play with all robots competing. However, the seeding will be done in a way that all teams will be distributed fairly and sometimes get a high and sometimes a low number assigned and thus we can ensure that all teams will play roughly the same amount of games.

Even in AdultSize, we will announce teams of three robots per Drop-In team:

Team blue: 1) TeamA, 2) TeamB, 3) TeamC

Team red: 1) TeamD, 2) TeamE, 3) TeamF

However, we will only play 2 versus 2 games. Thus, if all six teams show up, TeamC and TeamF will not play. TeamC will only play if TeamA or TeamB is missing and TeamF respecitvely only if D or E is missing.

1 versus 1 games will not be played in any Drop-In game in any league. If there are ever that many teams missing that we would need to play 1 versus 1, the game is cancelled.


With this plan we can ensure that the Drop-In games are played with fair conditions, meaning that each team has the same number of robots to compete. However, it is possible that each individual team will have a small difference in number of games played. For example, TeamA might have played six games while TeamE only played 5 in the end of the competition. In this case, the average number of points will be calculated to determine the final Drop-In ranking.

This year, at times we will play four Drop-In games in parallel. That means that teams are required to referee in a Drop-In game while their robot is competing in another game at the same time. Please take this into consideration when planning for how many people to register for the competition.


In addition, remember that in KidSize and TeenSize, only one robot handler per Drop-In team (meaning one for team blue and one for team red) is allowed. Make sure that you agree on a robot handler prior to the games and train that person to handle all the robots competing in the team.


Stay tuned for more information coming next week and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!

Cheers,

Maike (for the Technical Committee)