[robocup-legged] [Fwd: Re: Rule Changes and Poll]

[Walter Nistico]

This message is from Pedro Lima, since it did not reach the general
mailing list, i am forwarding it.

-------------------------- Original Message ------------------------------
Subject: Re: [robocup-legged] Rule Changes and Poll
From:      "Pedro M U A Lima" <pal at isr.ist.utl.pt>
Date:    Mon, 25 September 2006 4:16 pm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi again,

First a quick clarification: in the role of ISocRob team leader I can't
(and I won't) vote. My comments are stated in my role of Trustee.

Walter Nistico wrote:
>>1)
>>Who will argue for continuing the 4L if the last year of the competition
>>with Aibos was neither high quality nor entertaining?
>
> -------------
> Actually the discussion is between innovation and game quality (or
> entertainment).
> If we approve a series of important changes to the rules, innovation is
> granted, but game quality and entertainment are not.
> However, honestly nobody can say that the humanoid league, as it is now,
> it's entertaining, yet it is the most interesting, challenging and
> innovative.
>

In fact, it's quite entertaining, as the number of people in the
audience shows...

>
>

> ----------------------------------
> Actually the TC is discussing several other possible rule changes.
> However, the proposal of "mixed teams" poses a series of important
> problems: first it should be decided whether the mixed teams are
> statically or dynamically linked, so to speak.
> With statically linked, i mean something like the GermanTeam or TeamChaos,
> where a certain number of teams join forces and jointly develop a common
> code.
> With dynamically linked instead, i mean something like "pick-up soccer",
> where the robot code is developed independently from the various teams,
> but it must use a certain communication and coordination protocol so that
> anybody can play together with anybody else.
> Concerning the static team linking: i do not think that forcing a
> cooperation among teams is the right way to go. Such a cooperation poses
> already several important challenges when it is voluntary, and a
> rule-imposed cooperation could easily turn into a total disaster.
> Concerning the dynamic team linking: first off, there are too many
> possible permutations to generate the mixed teams as suggested, and this
> would result in an impractically high number of games.
> Second, the game quality would suffer greatly and really retrocede the
> league to pre-2002: in each match it would be enough that only one part of
> one team does not cooperate correctly to screw up the whole team play
> completely (e.g. one robot always runs to the ball); also it would be
> really difficult to devise real team strategies beyond a simple "area
> based" (as used in the 11 VS 11 match).
> Even in human pick-up games, the matches tend to greatly emphasize the
> 1-on-1 skills rather than the team play skills.
> At last, the results would be too much affected by random factors, like
> how well a certain combination of teams works compared to another one etc.
> well beyond the relative skills of the sub-teams involved.


I believe that, from a scientific standpoint, both the poles removal and
playing with mixed teams (yes, forcing teams to cooperate, both at the
human level and at the level of communiaction protocols and other
related things) are interesting challenges. For me, too, science quality
is far more important than entertainment (provided the robots do
something interesting to see, of course), but given the choices above, I
would rather go for mixed teams and enlarged fields, because both foster
cooperation and, in fact, this idea follows something the MSL is already
doing as well. Pole removal, as someone mentioned before, is not even
that realistic compared to human soccer.

Regards
Pedro

-- 
Pedro U. Lima
Instituto de Sistemas e Robotica,
Instituto Superior Tecnico - Torre Norte
Av. Rovisco Pais, 1
1049-001 Lisboa
PORTUGAL

Tel. +351-21-8418274 (office)
Fax  +351-21-8418291(office)
http://www.isr.ist.utl.pt/~pal


-- 
Ing. Walter Nistico
Robotics Research Institute (IRF)
Information Technology Section
Dortmund University
Otto-Hahn str. 8
44221 Dortmund, Germany
Phone: +49 231 7554533
Fax: +49 231 7553251