[robocup-worldwide] *** REMINDER *** RoboCup 2017 Rescue Agent Simulation - Call for Participation

[Farshid Faraji]

*Call for Participation*
*        2017 RoboCup Rescue Agent Simulation League Tournament*
*          to be held at Nagoya International Exhibition Hall,*
*                Nagoya, Japan -- July 25-30, 2017*
*          http://roborescue.sourceforge.net/web/2017/cfp.html
<http://roborescue.sourceforge.net/web/2017/cfp.html>*

*                       Co-located with the*
*                          RoboCup 2017*
*                    http://www.robocup2017.org
<http://www.robocup2017.org/>*

*                              ~ ~ ~*

****Team pre-registration deadline extended to March 10, 2017*****


IMPORTANT DATES
===============
Team pre-registration deadline:                  March 10, 2017 (23:59 UTC)
Team qualification material submission deadline: March 10, 2017 (23:59 UTC)
Qualified teams announcement:                    March 25, 2017
Camera-ready material submission deadline:       June 30, 2017
Tournament dates:                                July 25-30, 2017


ABOUT ROBOCUP RESCUE AGENT SIMULATION LEAGUE
============================================
Natural disasters are major adverse events that cause large-scale economic,
human, and environmental losses. They are usually difficult to predict and
it
is even more challenging to prevent them from happening. These
characteristics
demand disaster management strategies to be in place for the mitigation of
damaging consequences when a disaster happen.

The mission of the RoboCup Rescue Agent Simulation League is to promote
research and development in the socially significant domain of natural
disaster. The effective implementation of this mission is translated into
three
main objectives. First, the league aims to provide a simulator able to
realistically represent natural disaster scenarios where response plans can
be
assessed. Second, it aims to define evaluation benchmarks for response
plans
elaborated by policy-makers to act in real natural disaster situations.
Finally, it aims to promote research and development by organizing
competitions
to stimulate the exchange of ideas and experience between researchers and
practitioners. These aims are designed to help in the development of more
sophisticated and formalized plans to efficaciously respond to natural
disasters and reduce the negative impacts on society.

The 2017 RoboCup Rescue Agent Simulation League Tournament is composed of
three
competitions:
* Agent Simulation
* Infrastructure
* Technical Challenge


COMPETITIONS
============

Agent Simulation Competition
----------------------------
This competition involves primarily evaluating the performance of agent
teams
developed using ADK Framework (https://github.com/RCRS-ADF/RCRS-ADF) on
different maps of the RoboCup Rescue Agent Simulation (RCRS) platform
(https://sourceforge.net/projects/roborescue/files/roborescue/v1.2/).
Specifically, it involves evaluating the effectiveness of Ambulance, Police
Force, and Fire Brigade agents on rescuing civilians and extinguishing
fires in
cities where an earthquake has just happened.

The Agent Simulation competition is composed of a preliminary round split
in 2
phases, a semi-final round, and a final round. Each round is composed of a
set
of maps representing different possible situations used for evaluating and
scoring each agent team at each round. A single score is assigned to each
team
per round.

In the preliminary round, in addition to the agents' teams performance
evaluations on the maps, the teams are also evaluated by a presentation of
the
strategy implemented. This presentation aims to share the knowledge of the
teams and improve the academic research aspects of the league. Each team
will
have 20 minutes to present their implementation and another 10 minutes for
questions and answers. The presentation will be evaluated by a panel of
experts
and these evaluations will be incorporated into the score of the
preliminary
round. The presentation ranking will be considered as an additional map in
the
scoring system of the preliminary round.

The teams participating in the Agent Simulation competition will
automatically
participate in the Technical Challenge competition (see description below).

The participation in the Agent Simulation competition requires the
submission
of a detailed Team Description Paper (TDP) describing the strategies
implemented on the agents' code.

The three teams with the highest scores at the final round receive a prize.

Specific rules for participating on the RCRS competition are available at
http://roborescue.sourceforge.net/web/2017/index.html.

Infrastructure Competition
--------------------------
The Infrastructure competition involves the presentation of tool or
simulator
related to disaster management issues already developed by the
participating
team. The aim is to evaluate possible enhancements and expansions of the
RoboCup Rescue Simulation League environment (both the agent-simulator and
the
virtual robot platform) based on the new ideas and concepts proposed in
these
tools and simulators. The evaluation will be done by a panel of experts and
the
winner chosen accordingly to a set of factors related to the technical
aspects
of the tool or simulator and the presentation. The winner tool will be
selected
for further integration with the simulation platform.

The participation on Infrastructure competition requires the submission of
a
detailed Team Description Paper (TDP) describing the tool or simulator. In
addition to the submission of the TDP, teams interested in participating on
the
Infrastructure competition must release their source code as an open-source
project PRIOR to **Jul 25, 2017**. Even though the team is accepted for
participating on the competition, if it does not release the source-code
before
the agreed date, it will be disqualified and it will not be allowed to
participate in the competition. Thus it will not be evaluated and
considered
for winning the prize.

Participant teams should address topics including, but not limited to

* Improvements to the ADK Framework (RCRS-ADF)
* Increase the number of participants on the RoboCup Rescue league;
* Provide agent development kits that render easy the participation of new
comers;
* Integrate the Agent and Virtual Robot competitions;
* Improve the RoboCup Rescue server' stability;
* Improve the RoboCup Rescue sub-simulators.


Technical Challenge Competition
-------------------------------
The Technical Challenge competition will assess the modularity of the teams
implementation using the ADK Framework. The participation to the Technical
Challenge will be compulsory to teams participating in the Agent Simulation
Competition because the teams are required to implement their code using
the
ADK Framework. Therefore, teams are not required to send a separate Team
Description Paper (TDP) to participate in this competition.

The Technical Challenge competition will select one specific ADK module (To
Be Defined) from the best three teams in the Preliminary round to use in
all
participating teams. Each team will have their ADK module replaced by the
selected module of the best three teams and the team's code will be run in
one
randomly selected scenario (all teams will run on the same scenario). The
final
team' score will be the worst score among all runs.

The RoboCup Rescue Agent Simulation chairs will use the Sample Agent to
check the modularity of the selected module of the best three teams at the
end of the Preliminary round. If the module is not exchangeable, meaning
that it depends on specific information from the team's code, the team will
have the best
scenario score of the semi-finals disregarded. The next best team in the
Preliminary round will be assessed to share its module to replace the one
disqualified.


PRE-REGISTRATION
================
The pre-registration deadline is **March 10, 2017 (23:59 UTC)** and must be
electronically done through the web site:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rcrs2017

No qualification material is required at this moment. A pre-registration is
required for each competition the team intends to participate.


QUALIFICATION
=============
For qualification, the team must submit a Team Description Paper (TDP) (in
English) for each competition it aims to participate describing the focus
and
ideas as well as recent advancements implemented in the team. The TDP is
limited to 8 pages, formatted according to the LNCS requirements
(http://www.stage.sgw.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0)
 and
must be electronically submitted as PDF through the web site
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rcrs2017 no later than **March 10,
2017 (23:59 UTC)**.

TDPs are to be named "Agent_TeamName" for Agent Competition and
"Infrastructure_TeamName" for infrastructure competition. This format
should be
kept as the "Title" in the submission web page
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rcrs2017.

All teams should prepare their TDPs and presentation slides based on the
templates released at http://roborescue.sourceforge.net/web/documents.html

All TDPs will be peer-reviewed by at least two PC members. The evaluation
criteria of contributions will be based on originality, quality, clarity,
and
its relevance to the league's aims.

The suggestions of the reviewers should be incorporated into an improved
version of the TDP. The camera-ready copy should be uploaded to EasyChair by
**June 30, 2017**.

GENERAL QUALIFICATION RULES
===========================
There are several general rules on which the qualification processes as
well as
the tournaments are based:

1. One-Third-Rule: Only one third of the participating teams may be from
the
same country. For example with 15 places in RoboCup 2017 only 5 teams per
country are allowed. If a team is situated in more than one country, the
bound
location counts. Teams infringing this rule will be ignored in the ordered
list
of qualified teams. False statement results in penalty.

2. One-Team-Per-Research-Institution: Each university or research institute
may
only qualify one team. If a team is affiliated with more than one
institution,
the unbound affiliation counts. Teams infringing this rule will be ignored
in
the ordered list of qualified teams. False statement results in penalty.

3. Plagiarism-Penalty: If a team commits plagiarism, the team and its
members
will be banned from participation for this and next year's RoboCup. The
term
plagiarism comprises any use of external knowledge without proper
referencing,
i.e. copying or using the thoughts, ideas, texts or language in general and
presenting them as their own. This applies for Team Description Papers as
well
as team code. All kinds of licenses and copyright have to be respected.
This
applies for the qualification process as well as the RoboCup tournaments.
Please be aware that when a team is found guilty of committing plagiarism
it is
disqualified and banned at any time. This may also be in the middle of the
tournament.

4. No-Show-Penalty: If a team qualifies for RoboCup 2017, but is not able
to
participate, it has to cancel its participation ONE MONTH before the
RoboCup-2017's final registration deadline for the TEAM (by an email to
Farshid
Faraji at gmail.com) in order to give the next-ranked team the chance to take
its
place. If a team fails to observe this rule ('no-show'), the team and its
members will be banned for RoboCup 2018 competition.

5. Academic-Fairness-Rule: If any team breaches general academic fairness
in
any other way, it has to face penalties as well.


QUALIFICATION RESULTS
=====================

Qualification results will be announced on **March 25, 2017**.

We hope to see you all in Japan

Best regards on behalf of
RoboCup Rescue Agent Simulation Executive, Technical and Organizing
Committees
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