[robocup-small] Rule changes for 2005

[Joerg Kurlbaum]

Hi RoboCuppers,

we from B-Smart followed the discussion so far and want to make a
statement to the proposed changes for RoboCup 2005.

On Fri, Nov 12, 2004 at 10:17:55AM -0700, Sean Verret wrote:
> Change 1:
> 
> The dribbling distance will be set at 500mm for both active and passive
> dribblers.

Since it's not fully clear what is meant by passive and active dribbling,
the rule could not be enforced fully. It would make sense to clear
the rule. 
We "vote" for banning active, in todays cases motor-driven,
dribblers and to drop the dribbling distance rule completely. 
So pushing and intelligent ball handling could be done, but the
mechanical dribbler war would be over.

> Change 2:
> 
> For all restarts where the ball has gone out of bounds and the rules
> state the ball is too be placed ON a boundary line or within 10cm of a
> boundary line, the ball will be instead moved towards the middle of the
> field to an imaginary line that is 10cm any of the boundary lines that
> the ball is within the 10cm wall.  Needs rewording but I think it makes
> sense.

This is generally a nice idea which helps to keep the ball in the game
after uncareful freekicks. But we would like to implement Raul's idea 
with sloped walls. We've seen how easy you could build it from just a 
few parts. The advantage is definitly less intervention from the 
referee. So kick-ins or freekicks could be done fully autonomous.

> Change 4:
> 
> No more bluetooth is allowed in the small-size league, and all other RF
> decisions will be left to the OC based on local conditions.

Since we don't use Bluetooth or wireless lan and do not plan to do so we 
are not too much concerned about this decision.

But within the scope of Radio Transmission we would like see a little
more restriction on the use of typical Radio Transmission in the wave
band from ~400 to ~900 MHz. We had very big problems in Lisbon because
some team had highly amplified antennas that didn't only send in the
adjusted frequency but very wide in the whole range. 
We think several teams had problems with that, maybe even without really
localizing the source of trouble. That's quite frustating since there is
nothing you can do on the performance of your robots anymore.

> Change 6:
> 
> The EC/OC/TC will decide upon ALL yellows, blues, greens, cyans, and
> pinks allowed to be used by robots before the competition and will make
> enough of these colors available at the competition for each team to
> field 6 robots.

No. Please not.
Colors are not a big problem. Vision systems in the SSL should be able
to handle differenti mutations of colors. And it is still possible for 
the teams to agree on changing the set of colors per game.

> Change 7:
> 
> We will have 6 robots per team

No. We don't see why this should be done. More robots make the field 
more crowded (what we wanted to ease with the new field size) and we 
don't see how this would encourage passing.

> Change 8:
> 
> The time of game will include 12 minute halfs, 5 minute half time
> breaks, each team retains its color for the duration of the match and
> colors are decided along with the referee 1 hour before the match.

More time is okay with us. The color part is already discussed above.

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

We like the idea, that the attacking team has to touch the ball a second
time before it can score. This would be equal to the practice in human 
soccer (not equal to the rules, but human soccer players are not as dumb
as robots and also have a different shape and number of degrees of 
freedom ;-). Then there would be no need for special chip kicker rules.
That a team can only score from within the opponents field half
would be a possible extension to this rule.

A general question is, if direct freekicks are dropped in whole?
In Lisbon they were dropped temporaly, but we think they are still part 
of the official ruleset. 

Greetings,

  Tim Laue and Joerg Kurlbaum (B-Smart)

-- 
Jörg Kurlbaum
Email: jkur at informatik.uni-bremen.de
Universität Bremen (Germany)
GPG-ID: CAC40EA9 Fingerprint: D4D4 9F5E D3C7 86B2 0D7F 67F9 9B22 7396 CAC4 0EA9
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