[robocup-small] Rule changes for 2005, Commends from Cornell University

[Beng Kiat Ng]

Hi Raff!

It's good to hear from you again!

Let me answer your question regarding Change-9.

Chip kicker has an unfair advantage during direct free kicks. It's almost
like a penalty. Hence direct free kick was disllowed. Then it was observed
during the 2004 games that indirect free kick is also a problem, and the
indirect free kick rule was modified.

A direct free kick serves the purpose of giving an appropriate punishment
to an offence that lies somewhere between indirect free kick offences and
penalty offences. By doing away direct free kick, the punishment becomes
less severe. Rather than doing away with direct free kick, we might as well
disallow chip kick during free kicks. After all, it was observed in 2004
that free kicks' chip kicks mostly resulted in the ball going off the
field. I rather the rule be change to disadvantage the chip kicker (which
is the cause of the problem) than the rest of the teams. With your
proposal, a chip kicker can still have some kind of random chance by
chipping the ball into the defense area, and this was also observed during
2004.

As for teams violating the 20% rules, mayber we should introduce some form
of mandatory robot inpection during the competition.

Regards
BengKiat



>Change 9:
>
>There will be no chip kicks allowed during any restart.  Chip kicks (of
>any height) will be allowed during all other situations.

With regards to chip kicks.  I'm really addressing Raul's comments:
We should simply enforce the 20 percent convexity rule.  I was not at the
competition in 2004, but I was told that there were some teams that were
blatantly violating this rule.
Scooping the ball up violates the 20 percent rule.  Chip kicking
can be achieved without violating the 20 percent rule.  For
example, the RoboDragons in 2003 had an excellent chip kicker.  Also note,
however,
that it is not trivial to design a robust chip kicker.  It takes away from
other design
choices, such as faster,  more maneuverable robots.  There is a tradeoff
involved.

Addressing Sean's proposal. The rule could be the following:  treat all
restarts, with the exception
of penalty shots, as an indirect free kick, with the caveat that the
indirection
must come from your own team. In other words, the ball must touch
at least one other robot on your own team before going into the net.