[robocup-small] Ideas for 2007 Rules

[Sheng Yu]

I am a former developer in ZjuNlict.

For the problem of too powerful corner kicks, offside might be 
nice choice to prevent it. So why not introduce offside to our 
small-size league?

As the increasing of the field, offside might be a very common 
phenomenon.Therefore, most teams now set one or two players
just staying near the forbidden area even when they score less than 
the opponent because there is no offside rule in our game. If we have 
offside rule, the team might be able to put more players to offense.

It is also a teachnical challenge for all teams to handle the offside well.

Yu Sheng


>From: James Bruce <bruce at andrew.cmu.edu>
>To: robocup-small at cc.gatech.edu
>CC: small-size-tc at tzi.de
>Subject: [robocup-small] Ideas for 2007 Rules
>Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 11:27:31 +0800
>
>Hi everyone,
>
>The following are my *personal* thoughts on the rules changes I think
>might be useful for the league.  I'm not speaking in any official way
>at this point, merely putting out these ideas for discussion.  In a
>few weeks the TC will take the public discussion to form concrete
>rules proposals.  Please post any rules changes you would like to see,
>as now is the time to have them heard and discussed.
>
>Jim Bruce
>
>================================
>
>- Move to a partially automatic ethernet-based referee box
>
>    I liked the demonstration by Plasma-Z on semi-automated refereeing.
>    To make such a system practical, we would need to move to an
>    ethernet-based referee box.  This has some other advantages: (1) no
>    more need for split-serial cables, and finding long ethernet cables
>    is much easier. (2) it makes it easier to verify teams are connected
>    to the referee using a "heartbeat" message. (3) it is much easier to
>    find computers with two ethernet ports now compared to an extra
>    serial port. (4) if the long term plan is to move to a shared vision
>    system, we will need to develop a shared ethernet-based
>    communications system anyway.
>
>    The challenge, of course, is transitioning to a new system, and
>    helping teams to correctly set up separate ethernet networks on
>    their computers (we do not want one shared system, as it opens up
>    all sorts of problems with communication interference).
>
>    We could try to develop an ethernet+serial referee box during the
>    transition period.  I would be willing to help out in that effort.
>
>- Decrease timeout time to 5 minutes
>
>    Motivation: keep the games moving, and get them back under an hour.
>    Teams need to be ready for games.
>
>- Are chip kicks now too powerful for the goalie?
>
>    Proposal: allow a second defender to enter the defense area for a
>    limited time (3 seconds perhaps?)
>    Alternate Proposal: split the defense area into a small "no two
>    defenders" area, and a larger "no goalie touching" area.  This will
>    allow defenses a better chance of blocking while still preventing
>    walls across the entire goal.
>
>    Motivation: In the China open last week, for the first time two
>    teams capable of "header" shots met each other (CMDragons,
>    ZJUNlict).  After some early games adjusting things, we ended up
>    doing a TV demo that resulted in a 4-3 score after less than 8
>    minutes of play.  That projects out to a 16-12 or 16-15 score at the
>    end of the game, which is probably a little too high.
>
>    On the other hand, maybe corner kicks *should* be dangerous, just
>    like in real soccer.  If a team can complete too high a percentage
>    of corner kicks however, this can become a problem.
>
>- Teams must prove kickers are legal
>
>    Right now, there are a lot of chip kicker designs, including
>    short-travel wedges (the FU-Fighters 2005 design), wedges that
>    travel near the robot, and "scoops" that sweep outward from the
>    robot.  Some are easy to prove legal, such as the short travel
>    wedge, since the ball cannot ever violate the 20% rule throughout
>    the travel.  Scoop kickers are a bit more problematic, as legality
>    depends on the dynamics.  The ball *could* become illegal, but its
>    unclear if it *does*.  At the last competition the rules committee
>    ended up having to show kickers were illegal, when really the burden
>    should be on the teams.
>
>- General kick speed limitation?
>    Maybe we should limit kicks to some reasonable upper limit, such as
>    10 m/s (CMDragons was using 15 m/s for the last three games).  What
>    is needed however is some way of enforcing this.  I don't have any
>    good ideas on this, but maybe someone else does.
>
>- Increase team size to 6 robots
>    I think this might be the year to increase the number of robots, to
>    add more possibilities for passing, and to get closer to 11-vs-11 in
>    a manageable way.  Teams are scoring now, so we don't have the
>    situation of a few years ago with many 0-0 or 1-0 games.  However,
>    in order to prevent teams from stacking to defense too much, we
>    could *require* that at least one robot stay as a forward at all
>    times (i.e. a team must keep one robot on the offense side of the
>    field at all times).  This is kind of a reverse-offsides rule.
>
>- small field size increase (outer size unchanged)
>
>    With kicks now given 100mm from the border, the outer 300mm border
>    is not really necessary.  Thus, without any changes to vision
>    systems, we could decrease the outer border to 200mm on each side,
>    enlarging the field by 200mm in both dimensions.  In our lab, we
>    would not have enough space for this change, and this is probably
>    the case for many teams.  However, the size difference is not so
>    large, so teams should be able to verify easily that they can play
>    on such a field.
>
>- No travel support for teams that have not participated in a local
>    RoboCup competition or a RoboCup international competition within
>    the last two years.  (or maybe, no admittance, with the exception
>    that some local teams may be allowed to compete).
>
>    Motivation: we still have a problem with teams that come to the
>    competition but do not play, even with the "banned for two years"
>    stipulation currently in the rules.  I'm interesting in hearing what
>    people think about this issue, or if they have other approaches to
>    the addressing the problem.
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