AW: [robocup-small] Comments&suggestion for SSL

[Raul Rojas]

Dear friends,

just a few comments-to-the-comments up to now:

> Among all the leagues, SSL seems to have the least amount of discussion 
> (regarding rules, future direction etc) year after year. 

I think this is an intrinsic problem: our league has advanced faster than
the
other leagues, in terms of its original purpose. It is not so easy to
propose
new challenges. The small-size RoboCup community is both revolutionary and
conservative.
Revolutionary because it wants to make better and more difficult things.
Conservative because everybody hates field-size or robot changes.

> Robots are getting too fast! 

I proposed last year to make the leap to automatic refereeing, assigning a
cost
in terms of virtual energy to robot and shooting speed. This is the real
solution.
The field is locally crowded because the robots concentrate around the ball.
The solution is to let the robots "get tired" after they have run like
crazy,
in terms of the penalty paid (the virtual energy spent would be proportional
to the square of speed).
A referee box with vision could make the computation (this is feasible) or a
referee box which
obtains the velocity parameters from each team, and computes the energy
spent (also feasible).
This does not entail modifying robots, just making the referee box much
more comprehensive.

> Official colors worked really well this year. 

I disagree. We did not use "official" colors for any match, we just
did not need them, everybody could adjust to the colors of the other teams.
Official colors have been proposed year after year, since 2000, and
had never been considered necessary.

> Mandatory checks of robots. Referees should be equipped with tools to make
checks on robots before every game.

I agree, also the robots should be checked also the very first day when
teams
arrive, so that teams have time to modify anything, if needed.

> Video evidence. 

If the field is well built, with steel lines above the goal line, there
should be
no problem for the referee. Video challenges would stop the game constantly
and would lead to more discussions.

Again here, the real solution is a) automatic refereeing and b) solidly
built
fields.

Kind regards


Raul Rojas
FU-Fighters Team