[robocup-athome] RoboCup Interleague Mapping Challenge

[David Gossow]

Hi all,

this year, there will an interleague mapping challenge held during 
RoboCup World Championship. All @Home teams are welcome to participate.

For more information, see the attached message below.

Regards,
David

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Jacoff, Adam S.<adam.jacoff at nist.gov>

Dear RoboCupRescue Robot League, Virtual Robot Competition, and @Home
League participants,

If you are interested in robotic mapping in any way, please read on:
We're revising and extending our efforts to ramp up a RoboCup
Interleague Mapping Challenge again this year in Singapore. Last year
in Graz we initiated this effort by collecting some sensor data sets
on a common robot driving through the RoboCupRescue Robot League arena
and provided that data to teams on site to generate maps.  This year,
we're going one step farther.  We plan to capture such data sets in
each day's arena configuration to have a more comprehensive set of
maps to start methodically investigating the affect of certain arena
changes on particular mapping algorithms. This Mapping Challenge will
be going on throughout the event somewhat in the background, with no
additional effort required by teams after their initial submissions.

The goal is to evaluate the performance of mapping algorithms
independent of auxiliary factors, using recorded sensor data in a
consistent computation environment (virtual machine).  Teams are asked
to provide their mapping solution to the judges. Quite often those
programs rely on a multitude of external libraries and are compiled
for different operating systems. Therefore teams are asked to provide
their software together with their OS as a Sun Virtual Box image. The
judges will then start the provided systems on their computer in a
virtual machine. There they will upload the dataset, start the mapping
software and gather the generated map. Those maps will then be scored.

There is no need to provide the source code for any software – closed
source solutions are welcome to participate.

There is also no constraint regarding the programing language or
environment used. All solutions are also welcome as long as they can
be started from command line. It is also ok for programs to open a GUI
etc. – as long as they automatically close it when the mapping task is
done. Teams that already have the capability to run their mapping
algorithm on the command line from recorded data should have no
problem to implement the suggested solution. The sensor data will be
provided to the mapping algorithm in a defined, binary format and
include data from one IMU and one LRF. The rules document elaborates
further on the setup of the image for the virtual machine, on the
format of the data sets and on the format of the resulting maps
(geoTIFF).

If interested, please check out the attachments or the website at
http://www.nist.gov/mel/isd/ms/mapping_challenge.cfm

Any questions, please email Sören Schwertfeger
[s.schwertfeger at jacobs-university.de] as he is leading this effort in
Singapore.


Best Regards, and looking forward to seeing many of you in Singapore!

-Adam


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