Call for Applications 2008

Call for Applications

RoboCup-2008 Standard Platform League

http://www.tzi.de/spl

July, 2008

Suzhou, China

For RoboCup 2008 the Standard Platform League will contain 2 divisions. The Four-Legged Competition using the AIBO continues in 2008 but will be reduced to 16 teams. The matches will be played on a larger field and will consist of 5v5 robot games. In addition we introduce the Two-Legged Competition with the Nao, the successor to the AIBO. In 2008 this competition will consist of 12 teams, with each team receiving 2 robots in February and another 2 in May. For 2008 the Nao will play on a slightly modified current AIBO field, but from 2009 the Nao’s will play on the new ‘larger’ AIBO field being used in 2008.

We announce a call for participation in these two competition. We are aware that the call is earlier than previous years, but given the situation of the two divisions we feel it appropriate that the Nao decision should be made early (to enable further discussion on AIBO selection).

Initial Call for Participation

By the 30th of September, could all interested teams submit the following to spl_tech@tzi.de:

  1. Indicate if you would like to participate in the Two-Legged Competition
    a) If yes, prepare and submit a 2-5 page qualification document.
  2. Indicate if you would like to participate in the Four-Legged Competition
    a) At this stage we do not need a qualification document.

NOTE: Teams can compete in both competitions.

Given the limited number of spots in each competition we encourage teams to consider joint teams. Joint teams will be judged on combined merit, we will not be rewarding teams simply for merging. (i.e. creating a joint team will not guarantee acceptance)

Call for Participation in the AIBO Competition

The 16 Nao teams have now been announced, the next step is to decide on the 16 AIBO teams for RoboCup 2008. As stated before, the matches will be played on a larger field and will consist of 5v5 robot games. This larger field will be used in 2009 for Nao’s and as such AIBO’s will be a test bed for this setup in 2008. The rules for 2008 are now on the league page.

We now open an official call for applications for the AIBO league By the end of February 14th (GMT) could all interested teams submit the following –

  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)

Note : We are not officially pre-qualifying any teams so all teams must submit this data, of course a strong performance in the competition or challenges in 2007 will be taken in to account.

While we have no official rule regarding competing in both league, we are interested in giving as many teams as possible a chance to compete.

Basically, Nao qualification DOES NOT guarantee AIBO qualification. In fact we would encourage Nao teams to consider options such as a merged team in AIBO.

Thanks,

2008 Technical and Organising Committees