[robocup-worldwide] Call for Participation-RoboCup 2018 Rescue Agent Simulation

Farshid Faraji faraji.farshid at gmail.com
Sat Dec 30 07:20:52 EST 2017


*Call for Participation*
*2018 RoboCup Rescue Agent Simulation League Tournament*
*to be held at Palais des congrès,*
*Montréal, Canada — June 16-22, 2018*
*http://rescuesim.robocup.org/2018-montreal/2018-montreal-cfp/
<http://rescuesim.robocup.org/2018-montreal/2018-montreal-cfp/>*

*Co-located with the*
*RoboCup 2018*

*http://www.robocup2018.org <http://www.robocup2018.org/>*



IMPORTANT DATES
===============
Team Description Paper (TDP) submission: February 10, 2018 (23:59 UTC)
Qualified teams announcement…………: February 24, 2018
Camera-ready TDP submission………….: June 01, 2018
Tournament dates……………………: June 16-22, 2018

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 effectively
respond to natural disasters and reduce the negative impacts on society.

The 2018 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 Agent Development Framework (https://github.com/
roborescue/rcrs-adf) on different maps of the RoboCup Rescue Agent
Simulation (RCRS) platform (https://github.com/roborescue/rcrs-server).
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 to
evaluate and score each agent team at each round. A single score is
assigned to each team per round.

In addition to the evaluation of teams performance on the maps, teams are
also evaluated based on a presentation of their implemented strategy. 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 all rounds.

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 in the agents’ code.

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

Specific rules for participating in the RCRS competition are available at
http://rescuesim.robocup.org/.

Infrastructure Competition
————————–
The Infrastructure competition involves the presentation of tools or
simulators 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 **June 17, 2018**. 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 Agent Development Framework (RCRS-ADF)
* Increase the number of participants on the RoboCup Rescue league;
* Provide agent development kits that render easy the participation of
newcomers;
* 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 assesses the modularity of the teams'
implementation using the ADF. 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 ADF. 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 ADF module (To
Be Defined) from the best three teams in the Preliminary round to use in
all participating teams. Each team will have their ADF module replaced by
the selected module of the best three teams and the team’s code will be run
in selected scenarios (all teams will run on the same scenarios). 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 Agent Competition Preliminary round. If the module is not
exchangeable, meaning that it depends on specific information from the
team’s code, then 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.

QUALIFICATION
=============
The team must submit a Team Description Paper (TDP) (in English) for each
competition it aims to participate describing the focus, ideas, and recent
advancements implemented in the team. The TDP is limited to 12 pages and
must be electronically submitted as PDF through the submission system
available at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rcrs2018 no later than
**February 10, 2018 (23:59 UTC)**.

The TDP file name has to be “Agent_TeamName” for the Agent Competition and
“Infrastructure_TeamName” for the infrastructure competition. This format
should be used in the “Title” field in the submission web page
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rcrs2018.

All teams should prepare their Agent Competition TDP and presentation
slides based on the templates available at https://github.com/roborescue/
rcrs-templates.

The Infrastructure TDP does not have a specific template

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 (i.e., Camera-Ready version) of the TDP. The camera-ready version
should be uploaded to EasyChair no later than **June 01, 2018**.

GENERAL QUALIFICATION RULES
===========================
There are several general rules specified by the RoboCup Federation on
which the qualification process and the tournament are based:

1. One-Third-Rule: Only one-third of the participating teams may come from
the same country. If more than one-third of the qualified teams come from
the same country, the first one third (floor rounded) will be qualified and
the remaining disqualified due to this rule. If a team has members from
more than one country, all country counts. False country statement results
in a penalty.

2. One-Team-Per-Research-Institution: A university or research institute
may only qualify one team. If a team is affiliated with more than one
institution, all affiliation counts. False institution statement results in
a penalty.

3. Plagiarism-Penalty: If a team commits plagiarism, the team and its
members will be banned participating in the current and next year’s RoboCup
Rescue Simulation competitions. The term plagiarism comprises any use of
external knowledge without proper referencing, i.e., copying or using
thoughts, ideas, texts or language in general and presenting them as their
own. This applies to Team Description Papers as well as team code. All
kinds of licenses and copyright have to be respected. This applies to the
qualification process and 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 the RoboCup 2018, but is not
able to come to the venue, the team is required to cancel its participation
ONE MONTH before the final registration deadline of the RoboCup 2018 by
sending an email to faraji.farshid at gmail.com. This will give an opportunity
to the next qualified-ranked team to participate in the competition. If a
team fails to report it is unable to participate in the competition
(‘no-show’), the team and its members will be banned from RoboCup 2019
competition.

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

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

Qualification results will be announced on **February 24, 2018**.

We Hope to see you all in Montreal.


Best Regards,

Farshid Faraji on behalf of

RoboCup Rescue Agent Executive, Technical, and Organizing Committees
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