Questions and comments on the rules

Thank you a lot for all your remarks and your careful attention to details. I will use line numbers based on the same version to answer your comments and questions.

  • General

    • 27-34: Regional modification of the law
      • It is not necessary to remove it I think and it might be an advantage for
        organization of regional RoboCup competitions
    • 359-360: Gaze angle
      • I agree that it could be clarified, moreover, H_top could be introduced
        sooner (around 335)
    • 389-390: Magnetometer in software
      • Currently, the rules states that if there is any doubt, code must be
        available to referees. If the use of the magnetometer is optional and
        disabled in the software and there is another satisfying solution to break
        the symetry of the field, rules do not state that this is a problem.
    • 451: Solid shape
      • It might be explained more properly, we will discuss that
    • 712: Scoring from the respective half of the field
      • My understanding: projection of the center of the ball should be on the
        appropriate side of the field
  • Free kicks

    • 812-813: Direct free kick in penalty area
      • I personally agree
    • 895: Scoring from an indirect free kick
      • I don’t think so, the 10 seconds allow the robots from the other team to
        touch the ball, but it has no impact on being allowed to score a goal
        directly.
    • 904-908: Free-kick procedure
      • Check with game controller
    • 928: Ball in play after free-kick
      • I guess we could modify it like that (related to line 949-950)
    • 946: Free-kick from inside the penalty area
      • Agreed
    • 949: Touching ball with hands after free-kick
      • Agreed
    • 949-950: Touching the ball twice during free-kick
      • Currently rule states that the ball is in play once the kicker touched the
        ball, it can touch it twice before it moved 20 cm. If we change line 928,
        then we would have to update this as well.
    • 953: replacing “handles” by “touches”
      • There is already the notion of ‘deliberately’ which is unsuited for
        robots, I think that handles highlights the difference with lines 949-950.
    • 988: Position of penalty kicks
      • I think we discussed the rule you proposed back in Nagoya, I agree that it
        makes more sense.
  • Throw-in, goal kicks and corner kicks

    • 1061, 1119, 1166: Continuing play instead of restarting
      • Agreed
    • 1065: scoring from a throw-in
      • Agreed
    • 1130, 1178: Replacing the ball after goal-kick + corner-kick
      • I think that current formulation is satisfying enough since placement of
        the ball is always up to the referee and depend on the position of robots,
        thereis no need to overspecify it.
  • Penalty kicks procedure

    • 1258-1263: Balancing player numbers during penalty-shootouts
      • I agree, those lines should be suspended
  • Section 2

    • 1383: Touching a robot in Adult-size
      • Agreed
    • 1397: 10 goals limits
      • This rule has been removed and has also been removed from the game
        controller. Maybe we should consider removing this line.
    • 1401: Kicking the ball to reach their respective opponent’s goal
      • I think we can let interpretation of this rule up to referees, they can
        judge if there it makes sense to add extra-time based on the game. It is
        better than to come up with arbitrary criteria which might be unsuited.
    • 1455: Manual placement of striker robot during dropped ball
      • I agree with your comment, it needs to be fixed.
    • 1470: Update of free-kick procedure
      • I will look into it
    • 1507-1509: Exchange of field-player and goalie
      • Agreed, it seems to be the same sentence twice
    • 1513: Service time
      • Agreed. In order to favor robustness, I would even like to increase the
        service time to 2 minutes.
    • 1520: Buttons for Illegal Attack/Illegal defense
      • Agreed, I will push an issue on the GameController repository
    • 1568: Drop-in drawings announcements
      • It should be announce sooner if possible but there are no expected rule
        changes.
    • 1600-1602: Ranking drop-in teams
      • I agree that it needs clarifications, it will be discussed.
    • 1673: Issues regarding rule compliance of other robots
      • There are no problems about team markers. If teams agree on color 1 hour
        before, they can show the robot with the markers. If they can’t
        agree… they have to show both colors. Of course if the opponent makes
        changes on the robot design or on the markers, it is possible to
        complain. The main idea is to remove this part from the referees and to
        let teams handle robot inspection on their own.
  • Section 3

    • 1776: Metric for push-recovery
      • Yes this was agreed, rules will be changed

I will try to implement the modifications I agreed on during the next few days.