[robocup-nao] SPL Rules, especially Pushing

[Stefan Czarnetzki]

Hi everyone!

After the German Open and the US Open we all got a good impression what 
games will look like this year in Graz, and I think it's safe to say 
that there won't be any finals or semifinals without Naos touching the 
ball or doing anything useful at all. Nice progress!   :)

Anyway, another point that was interesting to see and to compare was the 
application of the rules to the games. On the German Open the rules were 
applied to the word and the referees were interfering a lot, especially 
concerning the pushing rule; which was absolutely correct and fair. 
Besides this, referees were still very worried about the robots and were 
running onto the field in lots of situations when a robot were in danger 
to fall over.

On the US Open the referees seemed to stay away from the carpet most of 
the times and robots were removed only in some rare situations. The 
games therefore looked a bit more like Aibo games, just in slow motion. 
If robots were close together and touching every once in a while, they 
were left alone. If a robot fell down, it was allowed to stand up on its 
own without someone running to help. The Nao that was still standing had 
its chance to kick during that time without interference.
At least this is my impression from the videos, I haven't been on site 
myself.

We had intended to discuss the rules again after the big Opens and I 
would like to hear other thoughts, especially about the pushing rule.

In my opinion the Naos are robust enough to survive falling down several 
times (as Aldebaran said), and with nice looking games without too many 
interventions in mind, I vote to soften the pushing rule.
I acknowledge that it would be much more sophisticated soccer playing if 
all robots would smoothly evade each other without collisions (which I 
haven't seen so far from any team), but I prefer the US Open style 
interpretation to the German Open one, where robots were taken out when 
heading straight for the ball but failing to avoid others correctly.


Cheers,
Stefan

-- 
Dipl.-Inf. Stefan Czarnetzki
Robotics Research Institute
Section Information Technology
Dortmund University of Technology
44221 Dortmund, Germany
mailto:Stefan.Czarnetzki at tu-dortmund.de
http://www.it.irf.tu-dortmund.de
Phone: +49 231 755 4513
Fax: +49 231 755 3251