General introduction into the work and time schedule for the Technical Committee
Main tasks of the TC usually:
Humanoid soccer competition (main responsibility)
October: Call For Participation
December: Applications with peer-reviews
January: Final decision on qualification
Autumn: Rules updates + Contact with LOC
Humanoid virtual soccer competition (also main responsibility now)
Other initiatives over the year (secondary)
Communication and organization
Notes of meeting published on the forum
Execs are usually receiving mails from trustees and forwarding to TC
Trustees related to the league are also on the mailing list (Oskar von Stryk and Daniel Polani)
Choice between Discord and E-mails for written communication
Some preferences for Discord (3), other for e-mails (3), abstain (2)
The proposal for changing to Discord is not approved
Which frequency of voice meetings?
Monthly meeting → agreed
Regular meeting on fixed date or doodle for every meeting?
Proposal: 1st Thursday of each month 1pm-3pm CEST-> Agreed
RoboCup HSC and Research Demonstration 2022 in Thailand
Status update from LOC
No updates from Pasan, he said he would be willing to act as LOC, Jacky will ask for update
Procedure and timeline for the Call for Participation (CfP) and submissions
Still no official confirmation that RoboCup is planned physically for 2022
Proposed procedure:
Maike: Wait confirmation from trustees that it should happen physically before having CfP, Ludovic, Alessandra and Jasper agree
Time for RoboCup 2022 is not published yet → problematic to announce the CfP
Jasper: Possibly update teams on state of the CfP (so they know we have not forgotten them)
Jacky: Even if its confirmed by trustees, there is still much uncertainty
Reinaldo: We say it will be virtual except if condition improves
Reinhard: GermanOpen options are still being evaluated
Azer: proposal to move the competition to Dubai
General Opinion: we can’t change the location of the physical competition, it’s not something that can’t even be discussed with respect to how the RoboCup is organized.
Comments
For RoboCupAsiaPacific, local teams compete physically and other teams compete virtually
Discussion over the option of having hybrid event
Several opinions for full virtual OR fully physical
Status of the organization is still unclear, it is better to wait for clarification before proceeding with CfP
Required steps
Size limits for Kid/Adult need to be set before CfP
If we want to change anything in the qualification process, we need to prepare and announce it ASAP
No one wants change from the 2019 process
The call should include Humanoid Soccer Competition and Humanoid Research Demonstration
Newsletter on a monthly basis
It worked well before virtual competition
It could be adapted on a less frequent basis to update teams on whats going on
Virtual HSC Competition / Champions League
Updates on logistics: Concept and support from the RoboCup Federation
Last year, everything was done through Maike’s personal account
Risk was taken personally
Expenses were paid upfront personally
Not sustainable solution on long-term
Asking to RCF what would be the other option
Access to AWS infrastructure from RCF might be difficult
We need several access rights, it might be complicated for RCF to give all of them
Collecting the money if that’s a one time event should not be a problem
New European RoboCup Non-profit organization as secundary option
Concerns were raised on the scientific aspect of a continuous champions league event, risk of too much engineering
Needs a concept on how we encourage teams to have a real scientific contribution
Jacky proposal: include more randomization
Ludovic: workshops at the end where teams describe what they used and how it can be translated to the real world (sim2real)
General discussion on the future of the virtual competition
One of the main question is ‘championship’ or ‘tournament’
Championship:
Competition over several months, each team plays a game every week/2 weeks
Tournament:
Similar to 2021, all games happen in a limited time (~1 week)
Azer: Virtual robots should behave better than real robots (less problems)
In last competition, some teams were not able to start game due to technical issues
It would be good to have several competitions for teams to be able to improve the models and software
In favor of championship
Reinaldo:
Currently setting up the Brazilian tournament, complexity should not be underestimated
Maike
Championship advantage: less tight for the schedule
Easier to have 4vs4 games
Less stress with respect to overtime
Teams have more time to update their software
Cost calculation with ~12 teams and 10 games per team
Every team has to pay ~300 USD for the whole tournament
Jasper
Even uploading it 3 days before would not be a problem if there is two weeks between two games
It would be nice to have support for Amazon
Jacky will try to establish contact
Ludovic
Championship means less crunch time → easier for teams and organizers to develop maintainable code and perform fixes or add features between games
Azer
Possible to host this at his university
Maike: Already had this option with Bordeaux, but was voted against for easier reproducibility. Now all the software is prepared for AWS, it would take major effort to make the change.
Jacky
We shouldn’t force team into the simulator
Azer: We should force teams to join because simulation is an important step to build good humanoid robots
Ludovic: Teams should not be forced to participate, they should be attracted because of the quality of the games, Jasper agrees
Championship as a separate events would work
Maike: Clarification that it would not collide schedule wise and it would not be taking participant away from the physical competition
Azer
We should not mix Simulation league and Virtual Humanoid at all because the are not tackling the same problems at all
Reinaldo: Simulation3D wants to move closer to what we are having, but they have problems with performance, so it’s not completely different, they will probably use our simulator as Technical Challenge
Maike: that’s also what the RCF has as a goal, we should also keep as a hardware league and not as a replacement.
Votes
6 for championship, 1 for tournament
Making simulation mandatory for teams? 1 (in favor), 6 (opposed)
How to build an OC around the virtual competition?
ask teams if people are interested in joining this OC
Should we have Drop-In games in virtual competitions
Jasper: Maybe later if we want to, maybe start by making it work properly currently
Maike: idea proposed was to have one additional game every week as a drop-in game
Reinaldo: So many problems for teams for their own software currently that it’s not sure they would be able to prepare for. Teams might not be ready for it
Ludovic: From an organizer perspective it would not be too much work, but for teams it will probably require significant work.
General opinion agrees on postponing it until current projects works properly.
Meeting with 3D-Sim OC:
How can we move forward and have a joint initiative with respect to virtual competition
Reinaldo will set up a meeting
Future of the Webots Simulator / AutoRef
Current situation:
Autoref still requires bug fixes or additional features
Code is difficult to maintain
Currently very few people have their hands in the code
How to organize a group of people around this?
create two taskforces with members of the league: 1. Infrastructure 2. Autoref
call for participation in this group in next newsletter