2022 Call for Participation

[NimbRoAdult]

With respect to the just sent out call for participation, we have two remarks:

1. The height limit for Adultsize has changed from 2019 without any consultation nor vote from the league. The latest meeting minutes: TC Meeting September 16th suggest that the height limits should be set before the CfP. Quoting:

@Maike

I just want to elaborate on this point a bit further. Last year, due to the time constraints of making that decision before the Call for Participation is sent out (in the beginning of October), we took the decision on the height update within the TC and without asking the league for their vote on this matter. As it was later pointed out by Sven Behnke and Oskar von Stryk (the Trustee responsible for our league), this decision has potentially major impacts on the scientific progress of the league and should not be taken without asking the league first. Hence, we are opening this discussion topic properly again to take a decision that reflects the opinion of the league better.

The topic was not properly discussed or voted on by the league. As previously stated, we are against banning robots of a certain height.
2. Registration process - can teams that were qualified for the 2020 competition simple reaply with their application, seeing as the competition did not take place neither in 2020 or 2021, and given their robot specification has not changed?

[Maike]

The topic was not properly discussed or voted on by the league. As previously stated, we are against banning robots of a certain height.

The league has been extensively involved in this discussion process. As you cited yourself, there was a discussion period in the Humanoid League forum in 2020, which resulted in a voting that was done in the HL league. The results of the vote were as follows:

Should we allow a gap between maximum height for KidSize and minimum height for AdultSize?
Yes: 7 (9)
No: 2
No gap, and have an overlap between the leagues instead: 4

If a gap between KidSize and AdultSize is allowed, what should be the maximum height for KidSize robots? [KidSize teams only]
90: 3
100: 4 (5)
110: 2
120: 0 (1)
130: 2

If a gap between KidSize and AdultSize is allowed, what should be the minimum height for AdultSize robots? [AdultSize teams only]
90: 1
130: 1

If no gap between KidSize and AdultSize is allowed, what should be the maximum height limit in KidSize and the minumum limit in AdultSize?
90: 1
100: 3 (4)
110: 2
120: 2 (3)
130: 3

If an overlap between the maximum height in KidSize and the minimum height in AdultSize would be implemented, how large should the overlap be?
10: 6 (7)
20: 3 (4)
30: 1

As you can see, the majority of participating teams were in favor of allowing a gap between Kid and AdultSize. However, the exact minimum height was not conclusive. With the 2020 competition being cancelled, we picked up that topic in the rule discussion during RoboCup 2021 again, the meeting minutes can be found here: RoboCup 2021: Rule and roadmap discussion - Meeting Minutes
Again, there was no conclusive decision reached by the teams in the league. The Technical Committee hence voted on this matter as teams were given enough opportunity in the last year to participate in this process without reaching a conclusion and unanimously decided to return to the 130 minimum height for AdultSize.

2. Registration process - can teams that were qualified for the 2020 competition simple reaply with their application, seeing as the competition did not take place neither in 2020 or 2021, and given their robot specification has not changed?

The abstract that is summarizing your teams progress since the last competition should reflect the current development of your team - if you did not progress since the 2020 application period, then you can submit the same abstract again. If more recent developments have been made, they need to be reflected both in the abstract as well as in the software and hardware description material you submit.

I hope that helps!
Maike

[NimbRoAdult]

Thank you Maike for the prompt and precise answers. I have some follow-up questions:

Regarding the vote, do you have a link to the topic as I cannot seem to find it? If it was done some other way, then how? Was the voting on the size changes for the physical competition in upcoming years, done by teams that participated in the recent virtual competition?

[Maike]

Hej,

as in previous years, the rule voting was done using an external survey tool - here is the link to the e-mail that it was announced in.
It specifies who is eligible to vote:

Eligible to vote is every team that has either participated in RoboCup 2019 or was qualified for RoboCup 2020 and aims to participate in 2021 again. Every team gets to vote once! There is one exceptions to this rule: If you have participated in two leagues in 2019 or were qualified for two leagues in 2020 and you are aiming to participate in two leagues in 2021 again. If you have participated in two leagues but will now only participate in one league, you only get to vote once. To ensure that every team only votes once, we require you to add some identifying information on the first page of the voting form. Please note that this is only required to ensure that all votes are valid, the votes themselves are afterwards analyzed and published fully anonymously.

We did ensure that only valid votes were counted in the final numbers that I shared before. The list of participating teams was as follows:

We had a total participation of 16 teams, 14 in KidSize and 2 in AdultSize. In KidSize, the following teams participated: Unbounded Designers (UD Robot), Hamburg Bit-Bots, Electric Sheep, RoboFEI, CIT Brains, Rhoban FC, NUbots, Bold Hearts, MRL-HSL, TKU, 01. RFC Berlin, Starkit, WF Wolves and ZJUDancer. In AdultSize, NimbRo and ZSTT-NTNU participated.

Three teams in KidSize that did not qualify according to the previous participation criteria mentioned above were counted separately in the voting (this is what the higher number in paranthesis indicated in the voting results above; one team abstained entirely).

It seems like the voting results were not properly communicated back to the teams as both the competition format as well as the rule update process was shifted to virtual shortly after. Apologies for that! We will send around the full list of results when preparing the discussion period for the 2022 rule book (which will follow shortly).