Call for Applications 2006


Call for Applications

RoboCup-2006 Four-Legged League

http://www.tzi.de/4legged

June 11 to 20, 2006

Bremen, Germany

Important Dates

  • Rule Changes Fixed: January 15, 2006
  • Deadline of Initial Intention of Participation: January 15, 2006
  • Submission of Qualification Material: February 15, 2006
  • Notification of Qualification: February 28, 2006
  • Open Registration on the Web: March 1, 2006
  • Decision on Team Travel Support: March 31, 2006
  • Close Registration on the Web: tba

Prepared by the RoboCup-2006 Four-Legged League Committees:

Organizing Committee

  • Will Uther, National ICT Australia, Australia (Chair)
  • Noriaki Mitsunaga, ATR, Japan
  • Thomas Röfer, Universität Bremen, Germany (Local Chair)
  • Mohan Sridharan, The University of Texas at Austin, USA

Technical Committee

  • Claude Sammut, University of New South Wales, Australia
  • Thomas Röfer, Universität Bremen, Germany
  • Michael Quinlan, The University of Newcastle, Australia
  • Mohan Sridharan, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
  • Will Uther, National ICT Australia, Australia
  • Niek Wijngaards, DECIS Lab, Netherlands
  • Masahiro Fujita, Sony Corporation, Japan



1. Objectives

One of the ultimate dreams in robotics is to create life-like robotics systems, such as humanoid robots and animal-like legged robots. We chose to build a quadruped robot because we believe that quadruped robots have major potential for future robotics, including entertainment applications for personal robots. However, a number of challenges exist before any such robot can be fielded in the real world. Robots have to be reasonably intelligent, maintain a certain level of agility, and be able to engage in some collaborative behaviors. RoboCup is an ideal challenge to foster robotics technologies for small personal and mobile robotics systems. Through the research and competition in this league, we believe technology will be developed that will improve robot performance not only in entertainment but also non-entertainment applications such as rescue robots and other dangerous jobs currently peformed by humans, and that robots will perform these tasks in the future by working together.

2. Participation in our League

RoboCup is an initiative to provide a research platform to integrate Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. RoboCup includes competitions and emphasizes the underlying research through a RoboCup symposium.

This is a call for applications to participate in RoboCup-2006 using the Sony entertainment robots AIBO ERS-7/M2/M3 (white only), or ERS-210(A) (black or white;use is not recommended) with OPEN-R SDK. Participation in RoboCup-2006 requires the submission of an application describing the research underlying the team.

The competition results are used in next year’s qualification to participate in Four-Legged League games or technical challenges. Teams are evaluated on their efforts and contribution to RoboCup-2006 in the qualification for 2006 alongside newly applied teams. Then qualified teams are eligible for participation in the next Four-Legged League competition. Rules for 2006 and necessary information are available at our website site (http://www.tzi.de/4legged).

Those interested in participating are encouraged to acquire further information about RoboCup and about the Sony four-legged robots from the RoboCup web page, http://www.robocup.org, as well as from the technical publications listed below, and the team reports written by the participants in 2005.

3. Guidelines for the Application Submission

Applications need to include:

  1. Intent to participate
  2. Application for Qualification – Team Information –
  3. Technical Report – Clear statement of research interests and results –
  4. A statement on whether you use code of other teams
  5. Pointers to relevant publications, if any
  6. Video submission (stored on your own server)
  7. If your code is based on the code release of another team, a “diff” is required to prove that you contributed enough on your own (stored on your own server)
  8. Travel support commitment for the team participation in RoboCup-2006

The applications will be evaluated by the League Technical Committee based on the strength of the qualifications of the team and the proposed approach. The competence demonstrated in local competitions or movie submissions will provide supplementary information for the committee. Please also note the qualification rules.

Applications are to be submitted by email with a maximum of 5 pages to the RoboCup-2006 Four-Legged League Technical Committee, legged_tech@tzi.de

The deadline for initial intent to participate is January 15, 2006. The final deadline to submit the applications is February 15, 2006. The final decisions will be made on February 28, 2006.



Local Open Competitions 2006

Technical Publications

  • Hiroaki Kitano, Masahiro Fujita, Stephane Zrehen , and Koji Kageyama, “Sony Legged Robot for RoboCup Challenge”, In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, IEEE, 1998, pp. 2605-2612
  • Manuela Veloso, William Uther, Masahiro Fujita, Minoru Asada, and Hiroaki Kitano, “Playing Soccer with Legged Robot”, In Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 1998, pp. 437-442

Further Information