[robocup-worldwide] REMINDER:Call for Participation - RCAP2018 Rescue Simulation League

[Farshid Faraji]

*Call for Participation*


*RoboCup Asia Pacific 2018Rescue Simulation League Tournament*
*to be held at Kish Island, Iran- December 5-10, 2018*
*http://www.robocupap2018.org <http://www.robocupap2018.org/>*

http://rescuesim.robocup.org/



*IMPORTANT DATES (updated)*
*pre-registration: 21 August – 7 September 2018

Team Description Paper (TDP) submission: 10 September 2018

Qualified teams announcement: 15 September 2018

Early registration: 15 September – 15 October 2018

Regular registration: 16 October – 16 November 2018

Late registration: 17 November – 30 November 2018


*ABOUT RCAP*

The RoboCup Asia Pacific (RCAP) 2018 will be held in *Kish Island, Iran
from 5 to 10 December 2018*. We would like to invite all RoboCup Rescue
Simulation teams to participate in the RCAP 2018 Rescue Simulation League
competition.

http://www.robocup-ap2018.org/


*PARTICIPATION*


All teams are required to pre-register through the online form available in
the website (https://robocupap2018.org/?page_id=10). The pre-registered
teams should then submit the relevant qualification materials as described
in the qualification section.


 *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 happens.
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.

http://rescuesim.robocup.org/

The 2018 RoboCup Asia Pacific Rescue Agent Simulation League Tournament is
composed of the following competitions:

   - Agent Simulation
   - Technical Challenge
   - Virtual Robot

 *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-core> 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 on the agents’ code.

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

The competition rules can be downloaded here 2018 RCRS Rules
<http://roborescue.sf.net/data/2018-RSL/agent/rsl18-rules.pdf>.

*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.



*Virtual Robot Competition*

The RoboCup Rescue Simulation League is a socially relevant part of RoboCup
event. Its main purpose is to provide emergency decision support by
integration of disaster information, prediction, planning, and human
interface.

A generic urban disaster simulation environment is constructed on network
computers. Heterogeneous intelligent agents such as firefighters,
commanders, victims, volunteers, etc. conduct search and rescue activities
in this virtual disaster world. Agents can sense their environment and make
decisions on the basis of the perceived data. Mission-critical human
interfaces support disaster managers, disaster relief brigades, residents,
and volunteers to decide their actions to minimize the disaster damage.

Addressing this problem involves advanced and interdisciplinary research
themes. As AI/robotics research, for example, behavior strategy (e.g.,
multi-agent planning, real-time/anytime planning, heterogeneity of agents,
robust planning, mixed-initiative planning) is a challenging problem. For
disaster researchers, RoboCup Rescue works as a standard basis in order to
develop practical comprehensive simulators adding necessary disaster
modules.

Since 2016, the Virtual Robot Competition is based on ROS/Gazebo, an
advanced robot simulator in which users can simulate multiple agents whose
capabilities closely mirror those of real robots. ROS/Gazebo currently
features several ground and air robots, as well as a wide range of sensors
and actuators. Moreover, exploiting ROS, users can easily develop their
robot systems integrating standard modules.

For more information:

– RoboCup Rescue Simulation League
<http://wiki.robocup.org/Rescue_Simulation_League>

– Tutorials and links to repositories for the simulation environment
<https://staff.fnwi.uva.nl/a.visser/activities/FutureOfRescue/>

– A demo <https://github.com/m-shimizu/RoboCup2017RVRL_Demo>

– Simulated worlds from previous competitions
<https://github.com/m-shimizu/RoboCup2016RVRL_FieldModels>

– Document describing the transition to the new simulator
<http://robocup.oss-cn-beijing.aliyuncs.com/symposium%2FRoboCup_Symposium_2015_submission_14.pdf>



 *QUALIFICATION*

The team must submit a Team Description Paper (TDP) (in English) describing
the focus, ideas, and recent advancements implemented in the team. The TDP
is limited to *8 pages* and must be electronically submitted as PDF through
the submission system available at EasyChair
<https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rcaprs2018>no later than *September
10, 2018 (23:59 UTC)*.

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

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

   1. Plagiarism-Penalty: If a team commits plagiarism, the team and its
   members will be banned participating on 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 for 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.
   2. 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 *September 15, 2018*.

Best Regards,
Farshid Faraji on behalf of
RoboCup Rescue Simulation Executive, Technical, and Organizing Committees
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