[robocup-small] Ideas for 2007 Rules

[Beng Kiat Ng]

Hi!

I'm always believe that increasing field size is not the way to go. The SSL
field size has been increased a number of times and the "crowding" problem
was never solved. The robots just get faster and faster, and I believe they
will still get faster, just like F1 unless you introduce rules to limit the
speed.

Once the robot's speed is lowered, the current field size should be able to
easily accomodate an extra robot per team, and the game will be more
manageable. Since there are quite a number of proposal to introduce some
form of referee-program, then we should seriously consider incorporating
some sort of speed check into the program to slow down the robots.

Slowing down the robot is more practical. You can build less expensive
robots. You have a field size that's manageable. The SSL will remain an
affordable entry league. No arm race!

Regards
BengKiat




c) Field
We have now the same field size for three years. We should start to
enlarge the field now. Many teams argue that lab space is a problem. Of
course it is. But for practice, you do not need a full field for most
things. I doubt that there are many Middle Size teams who have a full
field in their labs. Due to the global vision setup, it is quite easy to
practice on smaller fields.
A much harder problem will be the setup of global vision systems during
a competition. Currently, most teams have two cameras above the field.
Its already hard to make a reasonable schedule that contains many
matches as well as enough time for teams to set up and calibrate their
systems. Having a field that requires every team to set up four or more
cameras will make competitions with 20 or more teams unrealizable, in my
eyes. For future competitions (2008 and later) with possibly quite large
fields, this issue should be discussed soon. For 2007, I think we have
two choices for enlarging the field:
* We double the field size and limit the number of cameras per team to
two or three. The FU-Fighters already demonstrated that it is possible
to double the field size and still use two cameras. That seemed to work
fine with their system. Did any other team try to do something like that
with their own system?
* If such a change is too radical for most teams, we could do it in 2008
but decide that this year. For 2007, we could do an increase of the
field size of 50%. I expect that after such a change, most team's
software would still work in general (despite some minor adjustments, of
course ;-).

And now for something completely different: I like the idea of having
goals which look like real soccer goals. But I fear, that it might be
quite difficult to build goals that survive hard shots or misbehaving
robots.




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