[robocup-worldwide] Latest - RoboCup 2009 Rescue Agent and Infrastructure Competition - Call for Participation

[Kamal Karlapalem]

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Call for Intention: RoboCup Rescue Agent and Infrastructure Competitions
2009

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   To be held in conjunction with Robocup 2009 in Graz, Austria

            (http://www.robocup2009.org/)

                          Dated : 14th Jan 2009
                Date of Notification changed from March 9th to March 3rd.

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http://roborescue.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/roborescue/robocup2008data/SourceCodes/

Please submit your intention to participate by the **26th of January 2009**
(only affiliation information required-see below)

The RobocupRescue Agent Simulation Competition is divided two main
sub-leagues: the Agent competition and the Infrastructure competition.

* Agent Competition:
  The Agent competition involves scoring competing agent coordination
algorithms
on different maps of the RobocupRescue simulation platform. The challenge in
this case involves developing coordination algorithms that will enable teams
of Ambulances, Police forces, and Fire Brigades to save as many civilians as
possible and extinguish fires in a city where an earthquake has just
happened. The following general issues have to be dealt with:

1. New scoring schemes for ranking the teams.
2. Large number of new maps for the competition.
3. Scenarios wherein agents can lose communication.
4. Scheduling
5. Data fusion
6. Distributed constraints optimisation problems

Teams have to individually achieve a score on chosen maps which represent
different situations (e.g., civilians and fires, major fire in one corner of
a city, blocked roads to refuges, damaged platoon agents, fire maps, civilian
maps where only fires need to be extinguished or civilians need be saved
respectively) and this will determine how they compare with other teams. The
best teams on each map are then selected to move up the various rounds of
the tournament.
  The information on scoring is detailed in the ScoreVector Manual included
with the CFP. The participants shall be updated with any minor software
level changes made to the ScoreVector as is the case with the Rescue server.

* Infrastructure Competition:
  The Infrastructure competition involves evaluating tools and
simulators for simulating
disaster management problems in general. Here, the intent is, (but not
limited to), to build up realistic simulators and tools that could be used
to enhance the basic RobocupRescue simulator and expand upon it. The best
tools and simulators will be evaluated by a panel and a winner chosen
accordingly. The best tools will be selected for further integration with
the simulation platform.

While the general goal of the competition is to develop tools for disaster
management, it also provides a playground to try out tools and techniques
developed by Multi-Agent Systems and Artificial Intelligence research
communities.

Procedure to enter the competitions:

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  We require that groups intent on participating in the competitions should
send the following information to kamal at iiit.ac.in:

Team Name:
Affiliation:
Leader:
Contact email:
Website:

For each team member:
Email:
Address:
Previous participation in RoboCupRescue:

The deadline for pre-registration is the **26th of January 2009**. This does
not require submitting any code or detailed explanation of your
strategy/simulator.

New-comers

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We understand that not all groups are familiar with the RobocupRescue
platform. However, new teams can either choose to code their own algorithms
for the Agent competition or use algorithms developed by other teams in
previous years. While the basic robocuprescue package comes with dummy
agents pre-intalled, there are a number of JAVA-based and C++-based code
that are open source and will be soon available for download here. Last
years top 3 teams' codes will be directly downloadable from this page in the
coming weeks.

Note: It is important that new teams improve upon and acknowledge previous
teams' codes. Otherwise, they may be disqualified.

Important Dates:

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January 26th, 2009: Deadline for pre-registration.
January 26th, 2009: Rules of the game and tentative package released.
February 23rd, 2009: Teams submit their qualification material.
March 3rd, 2009: Acceptance notification to participating teams.
March 9thm2009: Registration Starts
July 2009: Competition takes place in conjunction with Robocup 2009.

Technical and Organising Committee (TOC)
Kamal Karlapalem (India)
Nobuhiro Ito (Japan)
Sarvapali Ramchurn (UK)
Soheil Hassas Yeganeh (Iran)
Omid AmirGhiasvand (Iran)

Local Organizing Chair (LOC)
Alexander Kleiner (Germany)

Committee to evaluate TDPs (along with TOC & LOC)
H. Levent Akin (Turkey)
Cameron Skinner (New Zealand)
Tomoichi Takahashi (Japan)
Jiang Fu (China)