[robocup-worldwide] [robocup-athome] Call for Participation (DSPL · OPL · SSPL)

Tue Oct 16 08:50:03 EDT 2018

First Call for Participation
RoboCup at Home 2019 (DSPL · OPL · SSPL)

July 02 - July 08, 2019 (Sydney, Australia)
http://www.robocup2019.org
http://www.robocupathome.org/
https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook

-== Text-only version ==-
HTML version available at
http://www.robocupathome.org/call-for-participation/cfp1-all-2019

RoboCup is an international scientific initiative with the goal to advance
the
state of the art of intelligent robots through competitions (RoboCup at Home,
RoboCup Soccer, RoboCup Rescue, RoboCup at Work and RoboCup Junior).

The RoboCup at Home league aims to develop service and assistive robot
technology
with high relevance for future personal domestic applications. It is the
largest international annual competition for autonomous service robots and
is
part of the RoboCup initiative. A set of benchmark tests is used to evaluate
the robots' abilities and performance in a realistic home environment
setting.
Focus lies on the following domains but is not limited to: Human-Robot-
Interaction and Cooperation, Navigation and Mapping in dynamic environments,
Computer Vision and Object Recognition under natural light conditions,
Object
Manipulation, Adaptive Behaviors, Behavior Integration, Ambient
Intelligence,
Standardization and System Integration.

This message describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for
RoboCup at Home League 2019.

Important dates:
    Sept. 15, 2018     Publication of the Call for Participation
    Sept. 30, 2018     Deadline for Intention of Participation
    Oct.  28, 2018     Deadline for submission of qualification material and
                    preregistration (Team Description Paper, Team Video,
                    Team Website).
    Nov.  15, 2018     Qualification announcement
    Jan.  20, 2019     Deadline for Participation Confirmation

The qualification procedure consists of the following two steps:

# Step 1) Intention of Participation (strongly recommended)

The team sends an email to the Organizing Committee (oc at robocupathome.org)
to
indicate your intention to participate in the RoboCup at Home 2019 event,
including the following basic information:

    Team Name:
    League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ]
    Country:
    Affiliation:
    Team Leader Name:
    Contact information (E-mail):
    Web site:

Only one team leader can be specified per team. Please provide only one
e-mail
for contact purposes and double-check you can receive emails there.

The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2019-Participation] (YourTeamName)

Please check the email is encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1
character set.

**** Deadline: Sunday, 30th Sept. 2018 23:59 GMT *****

# Step 2) Qualification Material Submission (mandatory)

The team ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee
(oc at robocupathome.org) to participate in the qualification process for the
RoboCup at Home 2019 event. Please fill in the following information:

    Team Name:
    League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ]
    Country:
    Affiliation:
    Team Leader Name:
    Contact information (E-mail):
    Rank in local tournaments:
    Link to a team video:
    Link to a team web site devoted to their efforts:
    Team Description Paper (TDP) attached to the email based on the
    official template.

The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2019-Qualification] (YourTeamName)

Considerations:

    - Only one platform can be specified per team.
    - Only one team leader can be specified per team.
    - Only one team video url can be specified per team.
    - Only one contact email can be specified per team.
    - All the publications and software to be evaluated for qualification
      ***MUST*** be in the team's website.
    - The email must be encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1
      character set.

**** Deadline: Sunday, Oct. 28, 2018 23:59 GMT *****

# Step 3) Participation confirmation (mandatory)

All qualified teams ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee
(oc at robocupathome.org) to confirm (or cancel) their participation in the
RoboCup at Home 2019 event. Confirming attendance implies that the team has
sufficient resources to register, and commits to attend to the event.

To confirm participation, please fill in the following information:

    Team Name:
    League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ]
    Country:

    Hereby [Team Name] of [Country] [confirms | forfeits] participation in
    the RoboCup at Home [League].

The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2019-Confirmation] (YourTeamName)

Remark: Qualified teams who miss the participation confirmation will be
disqualified automatically and the participation slots freed for the Second
Call for Participation.

**** Deadline: Sunday, Jan. 20, 2019 23:59 GMT *****

Instructions for the Team Video
===============================

In order to proof a running hardware, each team has to provide a
qualification
video.

As a minimum requirement for qualification, the video must show the robot(s)
successfully solving a task involving the integration of at least 5
different
abilities, such as: environmental reasoning, high-level task planning,
human-
robot interaction, localization, manipulation, object recognition, people
recognition, etc. Is strongly advised to show at least one Stage 2 test of
the
current or last year's rulebook.

Remarks:

    - The shown task execution must look continuous, smooth, and robust.
    - When speeding-up video, the speed factor must be indicated.
    - The language spoken and shown in the video must be English. When using
      any other languages, translations must be included.
    - We strongly suggest upload videos to Youtube.
    - Videos sent will be uploaded/displayed in the league's youtube channel
      http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists"
    - Standard Platforms Only: Teams are allowed to use any robot in the
Team
      Video. However, using the standard platform one is advised.

Copyright note:When sending videos for qualification, teams implicitly grant
permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, modify,
distribute, upload, publish, and use the multimedia material to promote the
event and the league at convenience.

Instructions for the TDP
========================

The TDP is an 8-pages long scientific paper, detailing information on the
technical and scientific approach of the team's research, while including
also
the following:

    - TDP
        * Group's research focus and interests.
        * Innovative technology and scientific contribution
            + Please specify when your research is being used by other teams
              or research groups.
            + Please specify when you are using software from other teams.
        * Brief, general description of the system when solving a [domestic]
          task (applicability in the real world)
            + The impact of your research must be clearly visible
        * Maximum length is 8 pages (including figures and citations).
    - Annex
        * Photo(s) of the robot
        * Brief, compact list of the 3rd party robot's software
          (e.g. MoveIt/YOLO should be included, but not OpenCV.).
        * Brief, compact description of all external computing devices, if
any
        * Brief, compact description of the robot's hardware (OPL Only).
        * Please mark with an asterisk home-made software solutions.
        * Annex should be appended after the References.
        * There is no page limit for annex, but a maximum of one page is
          strongly encouraged.
    - TDP length is 8 pages + annex.
    - DSPL and SSPL: The robot depicted in the TDP or Team Video must be the
      league's standard one.

For the TDP, please use the Springer LNAI format used in the RoboCup
Symposium
submissions and limit yourself to 8 pages without altering margins or
spacing
(including references but excluding the annex). You may download a template
for the TDP from here. Exceeding the number of pages will automatically void
your application.

Remark: The language for the TDP, its graphics, tables, images, and all
additional content must be English. Content in other languages must be
translated.

Copyright note:All TDPs sent for qualification may be made publicly
available
in the RoboCup @Home Wiki for further reference. On submitting, teams
implicitly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to
copy, distribute, upload, publish, and use the manuscript to promote the
event
and the league at convenience.

Instructions for the Web site
=============================

While the TDP goes into detail about the technical and scientific approach
of
the team's research, the website should be designed for a broader audience,
including:

    - Photos of the robot(s)
    - Videos of the robot(s)
    - Description of the approaches and information on scientific
achievements
    - Relevant publications (last 5 years, preferably available to download)
    - Link to repositories with software for the community
    - Team members
    - Previous participation in RoboCup
    - Participation and rankings in local RoboCup tournaments

Remark: No IP addresses will be accepted as website.

Remark: Only documented active software repositories are considered as
contributions to the league. It must be clear and straightforward to other
teams how to use your software.

Qualification and evaluation criteria:
======================================

In this first Call for Participation, up to 8 teams per league can be
assigned
a participation slot. In order to qualify, a team must meet the minimum
selection requirements approved by the Executive Committee. However, meeting
the minimum requirements won't automatically grant a participation slot.
Only
the top 8 teams meeting the selection criterion will qualify for
participation. Rejections are strongly advised to improve their
qualification
materials and apply in the second CFP.

Qualification materials will be judged by the following criteria:

    - Team description paper (clarity, completeness, innovation (scientific
      contributions), re-usability by the league, applicability in real
world)
    - Performance in local tournaments and previous competitions.
    - Qualification Video (number of demonstrated abilities, integration,
      difficulty of the task, applicability in real world)
    - Website (multimedia, publications from last 5 years, downloadable
      content, open-source software and other contributions)
    - Relevant Scientific contribution/publications (downloadable papers and
      open-source software)
    - Novelty of approach (what you do is new for @Home)

We encourage teams to produce self-explicative videos for a general audience
where complex tasks are solved. For Team Description Papers focus on the
scientific contribution and avoid brief descriptions of the overall system.

Note to experienced competitors: Major changes are being done in the
rulebook.
You may download the latest version from:

https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook.

You're encouraged to be part of the discussion of its ongoing development.

Step 4) Robot Acquisition (Standard Platform Leagues):
======================================================

Qualified Teams must
contact the supplier as soon as the Qualification Notification arrives to
start the acquisition procedure.

Teams selected to receive Standard-Platform robots have to make an agreement
with the supplier in compliance with the supplier's instructions.

The suppliers are not allowed to sell, export, lease and/or ship their
products to natural or legal persons and to entities and countries which are
subject to international sanctions or prohibitions. Since Selection
Committee
cannot answer this issue, please ask the supplier directly (spl-
sc at robocupathome.org).

Remark: Failing to acquire a Standard-Platform will void the qualification
of
the SSPL/DSPL. It won't not possible for SSPL/DSPL to change to OPL.

With kind regards, and looking forward to see your team in Sydney,
The 2019 RoboCup at Home Organizing and Technical Committees
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