[robocup-small] Ideas for 2007 Rules

[Mahisorn Wongphati]

Hi All,

After reading many ideas from many teams and thank Jim for the summary.
I'm also have some comment and idea for the rule change.

My own idea:

Shall we revise the main goal of our league?
What did we want from what we did?
Do we need to move to a more distributed AI on each robot like a real soccer?
Do we want to play in a real soccer field or outdoor field?
What is the technology that we give to the RoboCup?

How can we give more chance to a new team to participate in SSL or A
chance to participate for the second time after very bad impression in
the first time?
 - In this topic, Plasma-Z take 4 years to become 3rd place in SSL
with more than 4 generations of undergraduate student and a lot of
support from former team members.
The first time (2003) of our team, we pass to second round after
Cornell(1st) and Roboroos (2st). In 2004 we knockout in the first
round with almost unable to operate robots. Since we change too many
thing in our system. And we are knockout again in 2005 at Osaka after
we lost to fu-fighter(1st) and field ranger(3rd). If we just swap the
result between 2004 and 2003. Our them may not possible to continue
for the competition due to our performance. And we will never reach
this point.

Can we move to the unification of all league?
Do we need to joint with MSL or humanoid league?
How long dose our league will exist?

Comment on other idea:

On 10/18/06, James Bruce <bruce at andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
> Hi again,
> I summarized the comments made so far, and follow each with some
> comments of my own.
>    - Jim
>
>
> *** Move to a partially automatic ethernet-based referee box
> Krist W./Plasma-Z:
>      likes idea, but must deal with "honesty" issues in reporting
> Pailo Costa/5dpo:
>      likes a dual system, but should use UDP rather than TCP
>
> My vision of such a referee is that it would track the responses of each
> team, and perhaps even weight them by how much they match what the human
> ref says.  Another option is to allow one more team at a table to help
> auto-ref games which are not their own, which will help in breaking
> ties.  We can give a technical award at the end of robocup for the
> best/most accurate automatic refereeing by a team.
>
> In terms of implementation, I would absolutely use UDP.  Multicast might
> be difficult to do in a portable way, but luckily SSL does not have
> referee commands that are as time-critical as they once were (only
> force-start qualifies now).  I think we can solve that with unicast UDP
> if we randomize which team gets the message first, or maybe we favor the
> most accurate automatic ref :)
>

Ethernet-based  is a good idea for this device. But we also need an
official code for the ref box module on client side. Since we still
have the problem with refbox state during the match in many them. And
if we cannot provide auto-ref this year and we still use own old
refbox. How can we control the assit-ref reflex when he/she hear the
ref command?

My Idea is:
Can we create simple wireless control box for the main referee with 3
to 5 buttons for frequency use command such as stop, free kick,
indirect free kick and halt?

With this device, we can also give them to all assistance referees for
voting the final judgment in a noisy environment. And we can log all
command and voting result with timing that match with a real situation
in the field for the verification after the match if we need ( yes, we
can check with the video too)

This device can also use as a vote from human referee for auto-referee
system too.

We can use simple bluetooth module for this device. But in Thailand we
have a very cheap radio control car (< 10$)  with 5 buttons command
and it operate at 27.xxx MHz. We (Plasma-Z) can modify this toy for
this purpose without much effort if this idea is interesting for SSL
and testing is require.

>
> *** Decrease timeout time to 5 minutes
> Krist W./Plasma-Z:
>      prefers 10 minutes
> Smail Menani:
>      5 minutes ok, faulty robots can be removed while play continues
>
> Well, we could make a smaller step to 8 minutes.  The main thing I'm
> trying to avoid is the situation where both teams are having problems
> and play stops for almost 20 minutes as each team takes their timeouts
> one after the other.  That is too long in my opinion.  For comparison,
> the Aibo league has one timeout per team, for only 3 minutes.

In this topic, If both team can play and perform well (can run, can
shoot, can move and scoring the goal) 10 or 15 minutes is worth for
waiting for both audience and teams.

The only problem is the team that definitely cannot play or operate in
that match (which we can consider and disqualify for that match). And
a team that having a very severe problem during the match. For
example, camera broken, computer on fire or ever worst. Could we stop
and postpone the match for this kind of situation? If it is fit the
our timing.

Normally,  we can use the timeout that best fit with the global
schedule of the tournament.

>
> *** Are chip kicks now too powerful for the goalie?
> Yu Sheng/ex-ZJUNlict:
>      how about an offsides rule to help with this.
> Gordon Wyeth/ex-RoboRoos:
>      likes offsides idea, adds more strategy
> Nawarat/Plasma-Z:
>      offsides rule interesting, but may be hard to ref
>      should keep corner kick percentage around that of real soccer (50%?)
>      allowing second defender would be ok
> Krist W./Plasma-Z:
>      likes offsides, hard without automated referee
> BengKiat/LuckyStar:
>      with fast+accurate kickers, offside less effective
> Pailo Costa/5dpo:
>      allowing a second defender seems a good option
> Smail Menani:
>      hard to notice offsides, split defense area may be better
>
> Offsides does seem like a good idea to help with this, and seems to have
> a more support than my initial ideas.  Beng's observation that it won't
> help during regular play might not turn out to be a bad thing; We mainly
> want to help corner kicks, and not affect regular play too much.  To
> help in refereeing, perhaps we only enforce this at the time of a
> restart?  While the ref watches the kick, the assistant/ball handler can
> watch the defense and attackers.

Offside is a good ideal. But Prof. Beng' idea is an interesting issue.
Since 15m/s ball speed or more can shoot into the goal even their is
no gap between  goalie + defenders + attackers and goal.

>
> *** Teams must prove kickers are legal
> Pailo Costa/5dpo:
>      wants clarification of how this would be enforced
>      holding rules should handle currently "broken" cases
>
> The holding rules should definitely be fixed, and that is something I
> complained about a few years ago when chip kickers first looked
> possible.  Right now when a ball flies over a robot, it is technically
> guilty of holding.  Refs do not call that, of course, but it should be
> fixed.  In theory, its ok for a robot to be capable of holding, but the
> referee should only call it when it actually happens.  In practice, refs
> take a dim view on robots that can consistently violate the rules, even
> if temporary, as with the dribbler controversy in 2005.  If we are going
> to enforce that for dribblers, we should enforce that for kickers as
> well.  So, if the "proof" says that a kicker is legal unless it is up
> against another robot, the ref should call holding when the robot kicks
> while up against another robot, and give a free-kick to the other team.
>
> As far as how to prove legality, there are a bunch of possibilities as I
> see it, and I'm sure more exist as well.  Here are ones that come to mind:
> (1) show that it is legal at all points of kicker travel and ball
> position (this is what most teams can do now)
> (2) make a device that the ball would hit if the kicker were illegal
> (think of some sort of inverted foam wedge affixed to the top of the
> robot), and demonstrate that the kicker is not affected by the presence
> of the device (meaning the ball doesn't touch it, and thus stays out of
> that "illegal area").  This is hard to explain, but hopefully you get
> the idea.
> (3) Some equations or a simulation detailing the dynamics, and evidence
> showing how the real kicker follows that model.
> (4) A high-speed image sequence from the side showing the ball
> trajectory, along with evidence that the final kicker fielded at robocup
> follows a similar trajectory.
>

Stop using the dribble and 0% balling cover from convex hull can stop
this argument.

>
> *** General kick speed limitation?
> Krist W./Plasma-Z:
>      agrees, to avoid an arms race, and for safety
> Nawarat/Plasma-Z:
>      good idea, measure with static test
> Pailo Costa/5dpo:
>      good idea for safety, hard to enforce
> Tadashi N./RoboDragons:
>      to accomplish, should commit to ball change for 2008
> Smail Menani:
>      supports; Ball speed should be 6 m/s or 3x robot speed
>
> I think everyone agrees this would be a good idea in principle.
> However, the question really is how to enforce it during a game, and
> that's where I don't have any good ideas.  We need proposals to address
> *that* issue.  If auto-referees turn out to work well, that could be a
> solution, but that would be more of a 2008 thing IMO.
>
> I liked the ball that Tim Laue brought to RoboCup last year.  Perhaps we
> should commit to some exposition games using that ball, and try to get
> them distributed to a few teams (Tim, is there a place where can we buy
> them?).  The only problem I foresee with that is the following: to slow
> kickers, we want a deforming (soft) ball, but then the holding rules
> become more difficult to measure.  20% is much easier to measure on a
> hard ball that isn't deforming.  Maybe that won't be such of an issue,
> but ideas are certainly welcome.

I want to use that soft orange ball too. And 20% rule is nothing is we
don't use the dribble.

>
> *** Increase team size to 6 robots
> *** small field size increase (outer size unchanged)
> Nawarat/Plasma-Z:
>      wants a field size increase (how much?)
>      robot number increase needs a bigger field
> Krist W./Plasma-Z:
>      field increase is good, but don't add robots
> Pailo Costa/5dpo:
>      doesn't want to add robots
>      could start freekicks on the line again to effectively enlarge field
> Smail Menani:
>      keep five robots to avoid budget problems
>
> Ok, not too much support for these changes right now.  Hopefully more
> people will weigh in on the issue, and Plasma can be more specific on
> how large the field increase should be.  I think a doubling is out of
> the question if we want to have 20 teams competing in Atlanta.  That
> kind of field increase really depends on a shared vision system (which
> itself depends on getting at least automatic referees over ethernet
> working).

As we can see for the demonstration video form fu-fighter last years.
About twice the size of current field with 5 robots is a good idea.
Since we can still use our old cameras  with more challenge on vision
system and some lens changing. (4mm or less lens focus length on 4 m
mounting height at center of half field)

http://robocup.mi.fu-berlin.de/pmwiki/Main/Videos
http://robocup.mi.fu-berlin.de/videos/tests/experiment.wmv

>
> *** No travel support for teams that have not participated in a local
> Nawarat/Plasma-Z:
>      prefers more concrete (and enforced) qualification procedures
> Smail Menani:
>      will discourage new teams too much, need to keep participation up
>
> Ok, not too much support for this proposal.  The problem I'm trying to
> solve is the teams that show up and do not play, or who do not show up
> at all.  They are likely taking the spot of a team that would have
> played, and that's unfortunate.  It seems to me that first-year teams
> that haven't played in a local competition rarely show up and play,
> while ones who have been at a local competition end up playing.  Maybe
> someone can dig up some data to refute this.
>

Not agree with this idea. Thinking about a good team with very
interesting idea and great effort...but need some money for better
team condition.
If they give us a very impressive video and paper but they is the only
team from that country or continent.