[robocup-nao] Important things to consider during your preparations for RoboCup 2015

[Tim Laue]

(This e-mail is quite long and contains multiple important information. Please read it carefully and completely and forward it to you teammates who are not on this list.)

Dear SPL teams,

RoboCup 2015 will start in about two weeks! We assume that everybody is currently very busy with coding and travel preparations.

The Technical Committee would like to remind you of a number of things that you should consider during your preparations:


## Refereeing ##

Every team (main competition as well as drop-in competition) has to provide referees (head + assistants + GameController operator). Per game that you are required to referee, you will need to provide two persons.

Please read the current rules carefully. It is highly recommended that your team has a fixed set of persons who have already refereeing experience or who have practiced at home. Some hints for practice:
* Referee your own test games.
* Watch videos of recent SPL games, imagine that you are one of the referees, and compare your decisions to those of the original referees (assuming that they make correct decisions ;-)).
* Download the GameController and become familiar with the interface.
* It is planned to release a training video for referees within the next few days. Please watch it!

There will be a referee meeting at the RoboCup before the competition starts. However, this meeting is not a replacement for reading and understanding the rules. Its main purpose is to clarify the rules and to answer open questions.

Please note that there has been one more tiny rule update (July 1st). In this update, the following things have been clarified:
- How to handle robots that try to get up in SET.
- It is forbidden to listen to the communication of other teams.
There is an updated rules document online (http://www.tzi.de/spl/pub/Website/Downloads/Rules2015.pdf). The diff between this year's first rule update (March 18th) and the current version has also been updated (http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/spl/pub/Website/Downloads/Diff-SPL-Rules_2015v1-v2.pdf).

The head referee as well as the assistant referees are required to wear black or dark blue trousers and black or dark blue socks. When packing your stuff, please do not forget them!

We will provide standard whistles. However, for the preliminaries as well as for the drop-in games, you are free to bring your own whistle.


## Judging ##

For the drop-in competition, each team is required to provide judges. We strongly recommend that each team nominates 1-2 fixed judges who are very familiar with the rules and perform the judging for their team and thereby gain experience. In the past, we often had alternating and therefore inexperienced judges.
Please read the current rules for judging carefully. We will prepare and publish judge sheets as well as some additional help sheets before the competition.


## Your Software ##

Your robots are required to listen to the commands sent by the official GameController. Please download the current version (http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/spl/pub/Website/Downloads/GameController2015.zip) and test it with your robots.

Your robots are required to communicate via SPLStandardMessages only (please read the communication rules carefully). We will monitor the communication during the games by using the new Team Communication Monitor. This monitor is part of the current GameController package. We strongly suggest to test your robots with this application while you are still at home. The monitor will give you feedback, whether you communicate according to the rules or not. 

Please note that for the drop-in competition, it is required that your robots send messages to their teammates. (I would recommend sending messages in the main competition, too, but this is your choice ;-))


## Jerseys ##

The drop-in games will be played with the old 2013/2014 cyan and magenta jerseys. Please do not forget to bring all your old jerseys to the competition. There will also be some new teams that need to borrow them from you for their drop-in games.


## Challenges ##

Please do not forget to bring your ball for the "Realistic Ball Challenge".
Please consider bringing a carpet for the "Many Carpets Challenge" and let us know as soon as possible.


## Schedule ##

The main competition will begin on July 19th. There will be two setup days on July 17th and July 18th.
Please note that there will some important things already going on during these setup days. There is no official schedule yet, but be prepared that there will probably be

- a first team leader meeting in the evening of July 17th 
- referee and judge meetings on July 18th

and there might be

- the first drop-in games in the late afternoon of July 18th
- a technical challenge in the evening of July 18th

The two latter depend on the final schedule, which is currently prepared by the Organizing Committee. In the past, there have already been events on the second setup day to have a less crowded schedule on the main competition days.


See you all in Hefei!

Tim
On behalf of the TC

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_______________________________________________________________

Dr. Tim Laue

Multi-Sensor Interactive Systems Group
Faculty 3 - Mathematics and Computer Science
University of Bremen

Cartesium 0.53
Enrique-Schmidt-Str. 5
28359 Bremen

www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~timlaue

Telephone: +49 (421) 218-64209
Telefax  : +49 (421) 218-9864209