[robocup-legged] Reminder: Rule Changes and Poll

[Michael Quinlan]

Hi Everybody,
   Just a reminder that the deadline for voting is approaching. The 
votes need to be in by the 1st of October (~2 days time). This deadline 
is strict as the TC would like to finalise the rules for 2007 and the 
beacon decision *may* impact other rule changes.

I have included the original `call for votes' email, this includes the 
full instructions and pictures.

Thanks,
   Michael

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[robocup-legged] Rule Changes and Poll
Date: 	Thu, 14 Sep 2006 13:02:24 +0200
From: 	walter.nistico at uni-dortmund.de
To: 	robocup-legged at cc.gatech.edu



Dear all,

As you know, the 4-Legged League used to have some kind of “periodicity”
concerning innovations to the rules and hardware, where typically years
of major changes, like field structure or new robots, alternated with
years where the rules remained basically unchanged, to focus the
innovation on the high level behaviors and the quality of the games.

However, this year is a bit special, since it could possibly be the last
one of the 4-Legged League, at least for the league as we have known it
until now, and a lot of discussion has been going on in the Technical
Committee concerning the direction that the league should take for the
upcoming competitions.

According to the previous periodicity, this year should be the target of
major innovations, and some people advocates the need to show that our
league is on the cutting edge of scientific innovation to send a strong
signal to the RoboCup Committee, which might otherwise decide to
discontinue the league altogether; others instead feel that it is more
important to offer high quality games as a kind of “swan’s song” of a
league which has always been characterized by its spectacular and
entertaining games.



Encouraged by the positive results of the last technical challenge, and
a general consensus expressed in meetings at the last competitions (and
among the Technical Committee itself), we are happy to announce that the
*new goals* (with cylindrical posts and crossbar) have been approved to
replace the traditional “box-like” ones.

The new goals are both more pleasing to see (and offer the possibility
to the audience to see through them) and offer better features for
localization.



However, another possible major change to the field structure – namely,
the removal or altering of the colored beacons – has proved to be much
more controversial, since on one hand it represents an important step to
make the robots’ environment less “artificial”, but on the other hand it
could severely impact the quality of the games or require a full year of
development just to reach the same results of 2006.

As such, the Technical Committee has agreed to resolve the matter
through a poll.

The poll is asking you to vote for 4 possibilities: completely removing
the beacons, replacing them with 4 non unique beacons, replacing them
with 2 beacons, and leave the original beacons unchanged.

These possibilities are illustrated by pictures which you find attached
to this mail; please keep in mind that such pictures are just
explanatory and that the Technical Committee might decide later to
change some details like the positioning of such beacons or the colors.

The rules of the poll are as follows:

*  All teams which have successfully *qualified* for the 4-Legged League
*Soccer* competition of RoboCup 2005 and 2006 are entitled to vote, as
long as they intend to participate in 2007. Sorry, but “Challenge Only”
teams cannot vote, since we feel this decision will mostly affect the
soccer games

* Each team has to rank the 4 available voting options from 1 to 4,
where “1” is their preferred (i.e. highest ranked) choice. No two (or
more) options can have the same rank

The ranking has to be emailed to the Technical Committee at
legged_tech at tzi.de <mailto:legged_tech at tzi.de> in the following format:



/(Example)/



Team name: DEMOTeam

Qualified for RoboCup: 2005, 2006

Preference Ranking:

1) Two Beacons

2) Non Unique

3) No Beacons

4) No Change



* The poll will end on the 1^st of October, at 12:00GMT. In order for
the poll to be considered valid, at least 15 votes must have been expressed.

* The poll results will be announced by the Technical Committee shortly
thereafter.

Greetings,

Walter


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