[robocup-legged] 2007 RoboCup Qualification

[Michael Quinlan]

Hi,
  In 2007 we again had many applicants for the legged league. The
standard of all applicants was quite high but unfortunately we only
have 24 places available. However we extend an invitation to *all*
teams that applied to participate in the challenges.

The list of qualified teams is:
Pre-qualified:

NUbots
Microsoft Hellhounds
German Team
Wright Eagle
Dutch AIBO
Cerberus
Asura
SPRQ + IsoRob

Chosen by committee (Alphabetical order):

ARAIBO
Baby Tigers
Ceres
CMU
DEN-INU
Eagle Knights
FCTwaves
Impossibles
Jolly Pochie
LTU Blue Devils
Metrobots
Northern Bites
SharPKUngfu
TJArk
UChile
UT-Austin


Some insight for teams that were not selected:

All other things being equal:
  - The committee preferred teams that demonstrated soccer ability.
Some teams submitted excellent videos in support of their application.
We could not stress how nice it is to actually *see* the robot
performing the algorithms/tasks described in the written application.
  - The committee also considered the scientific contributions made by a team.
  - The committee tended not to choose teams that hadn't improved for
a number of years (i.e. 2nd year is easier to qualify, 3rd year is
harder). We instead preferred to give the opportunity to a new team
who had not competed before.
  - If "all other things are equal" then the committee preferred teams
that had done their own work. This point requires some clarification,
because an important part of science is building on the work of
others. The committee doesn't see much scientific interest in
hand-tuning a new soccer behaviour or creating a few new kicks,
especially when the base code is over 2 years old. It can strongly be
argued that a code base more than 2 years old should have undergone
substantial modification in most modules.

Please direct any queries to: legged_tech at tzi.de and once again we
thank all the teams for the effort that went into the applications.

Thanks,
  Michael
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