[robocup-small] May Update for RoboCup 2021

[Carla Cosenza]

Dear SSL teams,


RoboCup 2021 is approaching quite quickly :)

We have several news for you and want to gather some information from all teams.



Technical Challenges

The rules for the technical challenges are finally published and can be found at https://ssl.robocup.org/robocup-2021-technical-challenges/.



Hardware Challenges

The rules for the hardware challenges are available at https://ssl.robocup.org/robocup-2021-challenges/.

We have added the concrete scenarios to the rules as well now.



Awards

The awards have slightly changed this year. They are published at https://ssl.robocup.org/robocup-2021-awards/.



Virtual Tournament Setup

We have ordered four servers<https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ax161> for the virtual tournament from Hetzner. Each server will host one virtual field.

Each team will have up to 12 CPU cores, 32 GB of RAM and 32GB of disk space available (subject to change). Please let us know if you have any issues with these resource limits.

We will use Docker and Docker Compose to run everything. The exact setup can be found here<https://github.com/RoboCup-SSL/ssl-simulation-setup>. With this repository, you can easily try the full setup yourself and make sure that everything works fine with your software before the tournament begins.

Each team will have one container with a virtual desktop. You will not have root access, so you need to provide a modified Docker base image with all dependencies installed that are required to run and/or build your software and any other tools you might need during the tournament. The software itself can be cloned/copied/updated into the running container during the tournament. Have a look at the documentation on GitHub for details. If there are any problems, let us know on Discord or via email.

Please submit your customized base image as a pull request to the setup repository.



Scheduling Friendly Matches before RoboCup on Virtual Fields

As soon as the servers for the virtual tournament are available and set up, we’d like to give everyone the chance to play friendly matches and test their setup on the actual servers.


We plan to use Google Calendar for scheduling time slots on the virtual fields, before and during the RoboCup. We may also provide the tournament schedule via Google Calendar.

Please give us a Google account mail address that we can use to give your team leaders access to the calendar.

Please also let us know if you have issues accessing Google Calendar and if you have suggestions for other tools.



Simulator Implementation

There are two simulators available that implement the new simulation protocol<https://github.com/RoboCup-SSL/ssl-simulation-protocol>: grSim<https://github.com/RoboCup-SSL/grSim> and ER-Force Simulator<https://github.com/robotics-erlangen/framework#simulator-cli>. Both are integrated in the virtual tournament setup and can be used.

There has not been a final decision on the implementation to be used. We ask teams to send us their feedback and opinions on whether one or the other should be used. Please note that both simulators support customizing via settings, and you can also comment on settings that you like / dislike.


The simulator protocol supports different types of robot movement commands. The most common one is “local_velocity”. Please let us know if you use any other type, like “wheel_velocity”, because they might be less well tested and supported.


A few notes for the ER-Force simulator by their maintainers:

There are a lot of settings that make it easier or harder to control your robots or understand the vision output. The current default is close to what we observed during RoboCup 2019 with our notoriously poor dribbling robots.

  *   Teams should try simulate_dribbling=false to achieve similar dribbling behavior to that of grSim if your robots seem to be unable to control the ball.

  *   If you have issues filtering the ball, we suggest dribbler_ball_detections = 0; if that doesn’t help add also stddev_ball_p = 0.

  *   And finally, if you have issues reconstructing the path of an airborne ball, try camera_position_error=0.

You can also play with other parameters, but those should be the most important ones. You can set these settings either by sending the corresponding protobuf message, or by modifying the file `config/simulator-realism/Realistic.txt` to your wishes.

Make sure to tell TC/OC about settings you liked / disliked so we can use them for the official setup.


The final announcement of the simulator to be used will be made on 14th of May.



Robot Specs for the Virtual Tournament

We start to collect the robot specs of each team for the virtual tournament. As we announced previously, we gather realistic robot specs that match those of your real hardware. The robot spec config format is documented here<https://github.com/RoboCup-SSL/ssl-simulation-protocol/blob/master/proto/ssl_simulation_config.proto>. All robot specs will be maintained here<https://github.com/RoboCup-SSL/ssl-simulation-setup/blob/master/config/ssl-simulation-controller/robot-specs.yaml>. Please either submit a pull request or send us your specs via email.


Virtual Tournament Group Drawings and Tournament Schedule

This year teams won’t converge on a common timezone, which opens new issues regarding scheduling matches. We want to make sure teams don’t have to play matches at times they don’t like. To do so, participating teams have to send us available hours for the virtual competition per day; you need to offer at least 15 hours a day to make sure any two teams can play matches against each other. Note that there might be longer breaks in between while we wait for your opponents sun to rise.

To simplify organization, we just collect one time windows per day for all days. So please send us exactly two times in the UTC timezone in 24h format: The time when you start being available and the time when you are not available anymore. For example: “07:00 - 22:00”. The deadline for sending your availability is on the 9th of May.

We will soon be sending out an email with the groups for the Round Robin phase of the tournament. The drawing of these teams will be done in a similar fashion as previous years. Teams have been divided into buckets depending on their level as shown from their TDP, videos and past tournaments in order to guarantee a good diversity in each group. We will use the ssl grouping tool<https://github.com/RoboCup-SSL/ssl-grouping>, which is already updated for 2021 along with a random seed, generated by random.org, on Wednesday (May 5th, 2021). For any concerns on the group division process, please contact the OCs.



Hardware Challenge and Technical Challenge Scheduling

The hardware challenges will be scheduled in the week before and during the RoboCup. Time slots will be made available for which you can schedule your attempt. Each team is allowed to schedule two time slots. The second time slot is only used when (technical) difficulties occur and it’s impossible for you to participate in the challenges. You are not allowed to retake a challenge in the second time slot if you completed the challenge in the first.


In order for us to schedule the time slots, we require your availability for the week before and during the RoboCup. Please let us know when you will be available to perform the hardware challenges, in the same format as for the virtual tournament. Since the hardware challenges require you to access your labs, you can specify the times per day (for example from 9:00-18:00 during the week and 10:00-17:00 during the weekend). The 15 hour availability requirement is not applicable to the hardware challenges, but we ask you to provide your maximum availability. The deadline for sending your availability is on the 9th of May.



Summary of TODOs for you

Here is a summary of what we need from you:

  *   Submit RobotSpecs via Email or Pull-Request

  *   Submit customized Docker-Base Image via Email or Pull-Request

  *   Tell the TC, if you intend to use velocity commands other than local_velocity in the simulation

  *   Send us a Google account mail address for Google Calendar, if you want to schedule friendly matches or test on the virtual fields beforehand

  *   Send us your availability hours by mail before the 10th of May regarding:

     *   the virtual competition, in the form of “07:00 - 22:00”

     *   the hardware challenges, in the form of “07:00 - 22:00” (can differ per day).


We are looking forward to seeing you all (virtually) soon!



Carla Cosenza

RoboCup Small Size League | Organizing Committee

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