[robocup-nao] a few discussion items for Nao

[Michael Quinlan]

Hi Oskar,

  I'll try and answer some of these -
> I am relieved to see that the plan of using the new large four-legged 
> field has been dropped and the same playing field size
> as in the humanoid kidsize league has been chosen now.
>   
We were never planning on using the larger field for the Nao in 2008.
> I am wondering why the Nao league is not simply
> - playing 3 vs. 3
>  	(pro: enabling the teams having one replacement player)
>   
Agreed. Some of the emails on the bbs over the last few months have 
indicated that the number of players will be very much tied to 
reliability of the robots. Given that each team only has 4 robots, I 
would be guessing that 3v3 or even 2v2 is most likely at this stage. 
Until teams have 4 `final production quality' robots its very hard for 
us to know this number. Either way I suspect most teams are struggling 
low level skills such as locomotion so the number of players can be 
decided upon in the next few weeks.
> - using the humanoid kid size goals and poles,
>  	(pro: localization becomes easier than in current setup,
>  	Nao teams will have lots of other problems to solve besides
>  	localization)
> see PDF linked at
> http://lists.cc.gatec
Two points:

The TC is torn between having Beacons/Posts, I think we are almost 
evenly on this point. So we are still open to a league wide request to 
put the beacons back on (although I think we should stick to AIBO sized 
beacons). I'd be happy for teams to vote either way.

On the goal, to be honest I think the humanoid league should move to our 
goals.  They are more realistic, look better and provide a better 
viewing environment for the crowd. 
(http://www.bowdoin.edu/~jstrom/IMG_1374.JPG). Yes they may be harder to 
use, but they also remove most of the problems caused by shadows being 
cast on the walls of the old goals. Also I notice that the humanoid 
league changed its goals this year (or at least the drawing look 
different to the 2007 movies).
> Further advantages are
> - Goals and posts field are already planned for Suzhou, it is
>  	easy to have some more,
> - Exchange with RoboCup humanoid kid size league will be facilitated also.
> Exchange would be further facilitated if the same field lines as in the 
> humanoid league would be used.
>   
These are valid points, the first one I think is the responsibility of 
the local organizers to build the few extra goals and shouldn't be a big 
problem. The exchange idea is a difficult one, if this is an immediate 
aim then I agree over the next few years we should be making these 
leagues as similar as possible. However, most Nao teams come from the 
AIBO league so keeping similarity to the previous/current AIBO rules was 
also an issue for this year.
> Team uniforms will have no use for the Nao teams in 2008 for
> player recognition because there will be more basic problems to be solved.
> They will therefore be only useful for the spectators and referees.
> But for this purpose one could as well use other types
> of markers to identify players of different teams,
> e.g., removable colored numbers on the robot heads.
>   
Agreed, this is the least of my current concerns regarding the Nao ;)
> Being a member of the technical committee of the humanoid league
> I am also surprised that there was yet not a single intent of
> inter league communication and discussion between the TCs of the new 
> standard platform humanoid league and the established humanoid league.
>
> Of course, every league has its right to repeat the experiences
> already made in other leagues. But in no other RoboCup leagues
> the platforms and problems are so related as in the humanoid league
> and the new Nao league.
>
> For the future, I think it would be much more efficient for the
> progress of each league and of RoboCup as a whole
> if at least the technical committees of Nao and humanoid league would
> be discussing ways of cooperation and exchange.
>
>   
I agree that the leagues should share where possible, but I think its a 
two way street. Humanoid leagues could easily have adopted the 2007 
style Aibo goals, removed beacons or used our throw-in rules. Also we 
need to remember that the Nao competition went from a demonstration 8 
team league to a full fledged 16 team league. So originally we tried to 
keep things similar to the AIBO so those 8 teams could potentially do 
both this year.

Most teams have vision and localisation code already from the AIBO which 
can be reasonably easily ported to the Nao field.  So the real Nao 
problem will be locomotion and the rule differences don't really effect 
this aspect.

Also the SPL is a `software' only league, so we can probably afford to 
present more software problems (i.e. fewer/harder landmarks) where the 
Humanoid League teams also research and deal with hardware development 
which is time consuming on their behalf.
> Just my 5 cents.
>   
Thanks for the comments !


Michael