[robocup-worldwide] RoCKIn Competition 2015 News - including travel support for teams

[Pedro U. Lima]

=======================================================================
RoCKIn COMPETITION 2015 NEWS: 
	1. TRAVEL SUPPORT AVAILABLE
	2. VIDEO DESCRIPTION OF TBMs ONLINE
	3. UDATED LIST OF FBMs in RoCKIn at Home and RoCKIn at Work
	4. TEST BEDS READY FOR TESTS
	5. REMINDER: APPLICATIONS OPEN 

RoCKIn is short for “Robot Competitions Kick Innovation in Cognitive 
Systems and Robotics” and it is an EU-funded Coordination Action aiming 
at the promotion of research and education in Robotics through 
competitions (http://rockinrobotchallenge.eu).

RoCKIn Competition 2015, November 19-23, 2015
http://rockinrobotchallenge.eu/rockin2015.php
Pavilhão do Conhecimento (Pavilion of Knowledge), Lisboa, Portugal
=======================================================================


1. TRAVEL SUPPORT AVAILABLE
The RoCKIn consortium is pleased to announce that this year there will be a significant amount for travel support to the teams!
But do not forget you’ll have to submit your Intention to Participate until the end of May (see 5. below), and then prepare
a strong TDP, since this will impact the decision on who will get travel support and how much.

2. VIDEO DESCRIPTION OF TBMs ONLINE
Do you want to participate in RoCKIn 2015 but you still do not know what the challenges are all about? Find videos illustrating the objectives
of the 3 @Home and 3 @Work Task Benchmarks (TBMs) in the “Challenges” section of our page at
http://rockinrobotchallenge.eu/challenges.php.

3. UDATED LIST OF FBMs in RoCKIn at Home and RoCKIn at Work
This is new even for teams already familiar with RoCKIn. An updated list of Functionality Benchmarks (FBMs) can also be found in the links
to the two challenges from http://rockinrobotchallenge.eu/challenges.php. 
Participation in FBMs is mandatory this year. Participation in at least one TBM is very desirable and
strongly encouraged - but if you feel you are particularly strong at some specific subsystems (e.g., navigation, object perception)
and not at integrating them in a task, your team can show up and participate in FBMs only.

4. TEST BEDS READY FOR TESTS
The RoCKIn at Home test bed at ISR/IST U. Lisbon premises, and the RoCKIn at Work test bed at 
Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University premises are now fully available for teams who wish to travel there and test their robots
preparing for the competitions. Just drop an email to info at rockinrobotchallenge.eu if you are interested to book a visit.

5. REMINDER: APPLICATIONS OPEN 
The RoCKIn Competition 2015 (http://rockinrobotchallenge.eu/rockin2015.php), to be held in Lisboa’s main science museum
“Pavilion of Knowledge” (http://www.pavconhecimento.pt/home/?lang=2), 
November 19-23, 2015, will be the second and major RoCKIn competition event.
The first competition took place in Toulouse last year and was a tremendous success.
The “Pavilion of Knowledge” is located in one of Lisboa’s most privileged
leisure areas - Parque das Nações (http://www.portaldasnacoes.pt) - where restaurants,
bars and shopping areas share a 5 Km piece of land along the river Tagus, with delightful
green areas, museums and modern architecture buildings.  

RoCKIn addresses two challenges — RoCKIn at Home and RoCKIn at Work —
that take  inspiration from the corresponding RoboCup competitions, but focus on 
benchmarking and networked robot systems. Both challenges require basic 
navigation capabilities for mobile platforms, advanced (possibly distributed)
perception, manipulation and human-robot interaction. 
RoCKIn at Home focuses on tasks that service robots execute in a real home 
environment, while the tasks to be performed in RoCKIn at Work target an 
industrial automation scenario. 

The important dates for the application (2 steps), qualification and registration
process regarding the RoCKIn Competition 2015 are:

Schedule
- Intention to participate:			31 May 2015
- Application deadline: 			31 August 2015
- Decision on Qualified Teams: 	08 September 2015
- Registration open: 			09-30 September 2015 (for the qualified teams only)

All teams interested to participate in RoCKIn Competition 2015 should declare first their intention to participate (until 31 May 2015)
following the instructions in

 http://rockincompetition.eu/apply

After that, the team leader will receive an email granting authorization to his / her application account which requires inputting the following items (until 31 August 2015):

1. Team name and affiliation
2. Number of team members, with status (e.g., professor, post-doc, PhD student, MSc student, CEO, CFO, chief-engineer)
3. Challenge where the team will participate [ RoCKIn at Home and RoCKIn at Work ]
4. Six-pages two-column Team Description Paper (TDP).