[robocup-worldwide] RoboCup 2020 -> 2021

[Peter Stone]

Dear Worldwide RoboCup Community,

As I assume you know by now, we have had to take the difficult and
unprecedented step of postponing RoboCup 2020 for one year - until June
of 2021.  I am very grateful both to the Bordeaux Local Organizing
Committee (LOC) and to the Bangkok LOC, which has now agreed to host
RoboCup in 2022, for their flexibility.

I am saddened by this postponement both because of the difficult
worldwide conditions that have led to this eventuality, and because of
what it will mean for many of you personally.

First and foremost, I hope that everyone in the RoboCup community is
managing to stay healthy.  And if you are, I encourage you to consider
whether any of your considerable technical expertise - individually or
within your leagues as a whole - can be turned towards helping the world
overcome the current crisis.  I would like nothing more than for the
RoboCup community to be able to help in some way.  If you have any
creative ideas, please let me know!

Second, I know that many of you were already deep into your preparations
for RoboCup, both as organizers and as participants.  The LOC has done a
fantastic job preparing, and we look forward to being able to benefit
from these preparations next year.  The technical committees and
organizing committees of all our leagues were deep into preparations,
and the symposium chairs were well on the way to organizing a great
scientific event.  And of course hundreds (or thousands!) of you were
working hard on your teams to enter in the competition.


The purpose of this message is to explain to you our current plans for
filling the void of RoboCup 2020 and easing the transition to RoboCup
2021 in Bordeaux.

- All appointments to TCs, OCs, symposium chairs, and any other
organizational positions for 2020 will carry over by default to 2021.
Positions that had multi-year terms (such as executive committee member)
will all be extended by one year.  

- Teams that have already qualified for 2020 are automatically qualified
for 2021.  Leagues may additionally qualify new teams for 2021 next year
to fill any remaining capacity and/or to replace any teams that drop
out.

- During the originally planned days of RoboCup (June 22-29), all
leagues will have at least one community meeting organized by the
Executive Committee members and/or TCs and OCs.  Executive committee
members will be asked to report back to the trustees at a meeting near
the end of that period so that we can stay connected with the whole
community.  At their discretion, execs, TCs, and/or OCs are welcome to
organize additional meetings and/or events within their leagues (at any
time).

- In addition to the league discussions, there may be one or more
community-wide discussions during those days.  If so, details will be
forthcoming.

- The symposium will also be postponed to 2021.  I have already heard
some requests for the symposium to be held virtually, but I have decided
against that for a number of reasons.  Mainly, I don't think now is the
time to mobilize a program committee and review process when many people
are focused on family and health-related issues and/or moving to online
teaching and learning.  If you have work in progress that you were
planning to submit, I encourage you to keep working on it with the idea
of submitting it to the 2021 symposium, perhaps make it available sooner
on arXiv, or submit to a conference such as CoRL, AAAI, ICRA, or AAMAS
and then submit your next contribution to next year's symposium.  I look
forward to a great scientific event next year, and thank the program
co-chairs for agreeing to make that happen.

- There will be no RoboCup awards given in 2020.

- When the world returns to normal (soon, I hope!) I encourage regional
committees to consider organizing local events for teams that have been
working hard towards RoboCup 2020.  But this is of course optional and
dependent on local conditions.

- Of course any of you may self-organize to create RoboCup-related
events, mini-competition, and/or discussions at any time.  These will
not be sanctioned or overseen by the RoboCup Federation.  But we will be
happy to place links to them on our website if you let us know about
them.


For now, there is nothing to do other than to try to keep the planned
days of RoboCup available to connect with your league communities.  I
apologize for the disappointing news, but I'm confident that the RoboCup
community can persevere strongly through this.  I hope you will all stay
healthy and I look forward to us all coming back together again in
Bordeaux in 2021 and Bangkok in 2022!

Best Regards,

     Peter Stone
     President, RoboCup Federation

___

Professor Peter Stone 
David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professor
University Distinguished Teaching Professor
Associate Chair
Department of Computer Science     phone: 512-471-9796 
The University of Texas at Austin  fax:   512-471-8885
2317 Speedway, Stop D9500          pstone at cs.utexas.edu 
Austin, Texas 78712-1757 USA       http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pstone