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Fwd: RoboCup German Open 2018: Registration is open
by Sven Wachsmuth 13 Dec '17

13 Dec '17

-------- Weitergeleitete Nachricht -------- Betreff: RoboCup German Open 2018: Registration is open Datum: Mon, 16 Oct 2017 11:30:43 +0200 Von: RoboCup German Open 2018 <info(a)robocupgermanopen.de> Antwort an: RoboCup German Open 2018 <info(a)robocupgermanopen.de> An: RoboCup German Open 2018 <info(a)robocupgermanopen.de> Dear team leader, we are happy to announce, that the registration for the 16th RoboCup German Open 2018 has been opened at https://robocupgermanopen.de/en/major/teaminfos. Please see the call for participation below. The registration deadline is December 15, 2017. We hope to meet all of you and new teams in Magdeburg. Best regards, Ansgar (on behalf of the Major OC) --------------------------------------------------------------------- RoboCup German Open 2018 Call for Participation https://robocupgermanopen.de 27 - 29 April 2018 MESSE MAGDEBURG, Germany The RoboCup German Open 2018 will be the 16th open RoboCup competition held in Germany. The event will take place in Magdeburg at MESSE MAGDEBURG. -- RoboCup Major Leagues (international teams) ---------------------- Competitions are offered in the following leagues: - RoboCupSoccer Standard Platform League - RoboCupSoccer Humanoid League (Kid-Size) - RoboCupRescue Robot League - RoboCup@Home League - RoboCupIndustrial Logistics League - RoboCupIndustrial RoboCup@Work League The registration opens *** 15 October 2017 ***. The registration deadline is *** 15 December 2017 ***. Visit https://robocupgermanopen.de to register your RoboCup Major League team. Details on the registration (fee, accommodation, rules) are available on the web site. Booking of blocked accommodation with special rates is possible after your registration. The Major Leagues Organising Committee: - Thomas Röfer (Standard Platform League) - Reinhard Gerndt (Humanoid League) - Johannes Pellenz (Rescue Robot League) - Sven Wachsmuth, Raphael Memmetsheimer (RoboCup@Home League) - Ulrich Karras (Logistics League) - Sebastian Zug (RoboCup@Work League) -- RoboCup Junior ---------------------------------------------------- The German RoboCup Junior qualification for RoboCup 2018 is performed in two steps. German teams qualify in seven local tournaments in Bad Zwischenahn, Berlin, Hamburg, Hannover, Mannheim, Sankt Augustin and Vöhringen for the final of the 18th German RoboCup Junior Championship which is held within the RoboCup German Open 2018. The best Junior teams will qualify for RoboCup 2018 in Canada. -- Important dates -------------------------------------------------- 15.09.2017 Publication of Call for Participation 15.10.2017 Registration opens 15.12.2017 Registration deadline RoboCup Major teams 15.02.2018 Registration deadline team members with names 15.04.2018 Registration fee due 25.04.2018 Set-up day Major League teams 26.04.2018 Set-up day Major League teams 27.04.2018 Competition day (open to public) 28.04.2018 Competition day (open to public) 29.04.2018 Competition day, finals (open to public) Please contact info(a)robocupgermanopen.de for any questions. See you all again at the 16th RoboCup German Open 2018! Best regards, Ansgar Bredenfeld (Chair RoboCup German Open) RoboCup German Open is organized on behalf of the German RoboCup Committee by Landeshauptstadt Magdeburg and Dr. Bredenfeld UG. -- Besten Gruß Das RoboCup German Open Orga-Team 2018

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[@Home-CFP] Second Call for Participation (DSPL · OPL · SSPL)
by Mauricio Matamoros 23 Nov '17

23 Nov '17

[Source: http://www.robocupathome.org/call-for-participation/cfp-all-2018] *Important Notice: *This second Call for Participation is open to all teams targeting all leagues, including those teams who missed the previous calls or didn't attain qualification. Teams that already submitted qualification material and were not accepted can resubmit an improved version of it. ------------------------------ Second Call for Participation RoboCup@Home 2018 (DSPL · OPL · SSPL) June 16 - June 22, 2018 (Montreal, Canada) http://www.robocup2018.org http://www.robocupathome.org/ https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook RoboCup is an international scientific initiative with the goal to advance the state of the art of intelligent robots through competitions (RoboCup@Home, RoboCup Soccer, RoboCup Rescue, RoboCup@Work and RoboCup Junior). The RoboCup@Home league aims to develop service and assistive robot technology with high relevance for future personal domestic applications. It is the largest international annual competition for autonomous service robots and is part of the RoboCup initiative. A set of benchmark tests is used to evaluate the robots' abilities and performance in a realistic home environment setting. Focus lies on the following domains but is not limited to: Human-Robot-Interaction and Cooperation, Navigation and Mapping in dynamic environments, Computer Vision and Object Recognition under natural light conditions, Object Manipulation, Adaptive Behaviors, Behavior Integration, Ambient Intelligence, Standardization and System Integration. This message describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home League 2018. Important dates: Nov. 22, 2017 Publication of the Call for Participation Dec. 31, 2017 Deadline for Intention of Participation Jan. 15, 2018 Deadline for submission of qualification material and preregistration. (Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website). Jan. 31, 2018 Qualification announcement Feb. 25, 2018 Deadline for Participation Confirmation The qualification procedure consists of the following two steps: Step 1) Intention of Participation (strongly recommended) The team sends an email to the Organizing Committee (oc(a)robocupathome.org) to indicate your intention to participate in the RoboCup@Home 2018 event, including the following basic information: Team Name: League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ] Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Web site: Only one team leader can be specified per team. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Participation] (YourTeamName) Please check the email is encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. ***** Deadline: Sunday, 31th Dec. 2017 23:59 GMT ****** Step 2) Qualification Material Submission (mandatory) The team ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee ( oc(a)robocupathome.org) to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup@Home 2018 event. Please fill in the following information: Team Name: League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ] Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Rank in local tournaments: Link to a team video: Link to a team web site devoted to their efforts: Team Description Paper (TDP) attached to the email based on the official template. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Participation] (YourTeamName) Considerations: - Only one platform can be specified per team. - Only one team leader can be specified per team. - Only one contact email can be specified per team. - All the publications and software to be evaluated for qualification ***MUST*** be in the team's website. - The email must be encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. ***** Deadline: Monday, Jan. 15, 2018 23:59 GMT ****** Step 3) Participation confirmation (mandatory) All qualified teams ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee ( oc(a)robocupathome.org) to confirm (or cancel) their participation in the RoboCup@Home 2018 event. Confirming attendance implies that the team has sufficient resources to register, and commits to attend to the event. To confirm participation, please fill in the following information: Team Name: League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ] Country: Hereby [Team Name] of [Country] confirms/revokes its attendance to the RoboCup@Home [League]. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Confirmation] (YourTeamName) *Remark: *Qualified teams who miss the participation confirmation will be disqualified automatically and may be banned from the 2019 event. ***** Deadline: Sunday, Feb. 25, 2018 23:59 GMT ****** Instructions for the Team Video =========================== In order to proof a running hardware, each team has to provide a qualification video. As a minimum requirement for qualification, the video must show the robot(s) successfully solving a task involving the integration of at least 5 different abilities, such as: environmental reasoning, high-level task planning, human-robot interaction, localization, manipulation, object recognition, people recognition, etc. Is strongly advised to show at least one Stage 2 test of the current or last year's rulebook. *Remarks:* - The shown task execution must look continuous, smooth, and robust. - When speeding-up video, the speed factor must be indicated. - The language spoken and shown in the video must be English. When using any other languages, translations must be included. - We strongly suggest upload videos to Youtube. - Videos sent will be uploaded/displayed in the league's youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists" <http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists> - *Standard Platforms Only:* Teams are allowed to use any robot in their Team Video, but the use of the standard robot is advised. *Copyright note:*When sending videos for qualification, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, modify, distribute, upload, publish, and use the multimedia material to promote the event and the league at convenience. Instructions for the TDP ======================== The TDP is an 8-pages long scientific paper, detailing information on the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, while including also the following: - Innovative technology and scientific contribution - Focus of research/research interests - Re-usability of the system for other research groups - Applicability of the robot in the real world - TDP length is 8 pages + annex. - Photo(s) of the robot (in annex). - Brief, compact list of the 3rd party robot's software (e.g. ROS vision should be included, but not OpenCV. In annex). - Brief, compact description of all external computing devices, if any (in annex). - *OPL Only:* Brief, compact description of the robot's hardware (in annex). - *DSPL and SSPL:* When the robot depicted in the TDP or Team Video is different from the league's standard one, the TDP must clearly state how the addressed approach and described software will be adapted to the standard platform robot. For the TDP, please use the Springer LNAI format <http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0> used in the RoboCup Symposium submissions and limit yourself to 8 pages without altering margins or spacing (including references but excluding the annex). You may download a template for the TDP from here <https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/TDPTemplate>. Exceeding the number of pages will automatically void your application. *Remark: *The language for the TDP, its graphics, tables, images, and all additional content must be English. Content in other languages must be translated. *Copyright note:*All TDPs sent for qualification may be made publicly available in the RoboCup @Home Wiki for further reference. On submitting, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, distribute, upload, publish, and use the manuscript to promote the event and the league at convenience. Instructions for the Web site ========================== While the TDP goes into detail about the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, the website should be designed for a broader audience, including: - Photos of the robot(s) - Videos of the robot(s) - Description of the approaches and information on scientific achievements - Relevant publications (last 5 years, preferably available to download) - Link to repositories with software for the community - Team members - Previous participation in RoboCup - Participation and rankings in local RoboCup tournaments *Remark: *Only documented active software repositories are considered as contributions to the league. It must be clear and straightforward to other teams how to use your software. Evaluation criteria: ================= Qualification materials will be judged by the following criteria: - Team description paper (clarity, scientific contributions, re-usability by the league, applicability in real world) - Performance in local tournaments and previous competitions. - Qualification Video (navigation, human-robot interaction, people/object recognition, object manipulation and new features) - Website (multimedia, publications from last 5 years, downloadable content, open-source software and other contributions) - Relevant Scientific contribution/publications (downloadable papers and open-source software) - Novelty of approach (what you do is new for @Home) We encourage teams to produce self-explicative videos for a general audience where complex tasks are solved. For Team Description Papers focus on the scientific contribution and avoid brief descriptions of the overall system. *Note to experienced competitors:* Major changes are being done in the rulebook. You may download the latest version from: https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook. With kind regards, and looking forward to see your team in Montreal, The 2018 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees

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[journals] RAS special issue: Semantic Policy and Action Representations for Autonomous Robots (SPAR)
by Karinne Ramirez Amaro 15 Nov '17

15 Nov '17

********************************************************************************************** **** Robotics and Autonomous Systems Special Issue on Semantic Policy and Action Representations for Autonomous Robots*** ********************************************************************************************** ----Call for Papers--- It is our pleasure to announce the Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) special issue on Semantic Policy and Action Representations for Autonomous Robots (SPAR). This special issue is a follow-up outcome of two successful IROS workshops held in 2015 and 2017. We would like to invite all interested researchers to submit their papers in the areas of reasoning, perception, control, planning, and learning applied to robotic systems. ***RAS-SPAR Special issue URL*** http://www.ics.ei.tum.de/en/www.ics.ei.tum.de/workshopiros/ras-special-issu… Contact email: spar.workshop(a)gmail.com *** Important Dates ***: Paper submission deadline: 25th March 2018 Notification of acceptance: 15th June 2018 Final Submission: 3rd August 2018 Publication date: September 2018 *** Special issue objectives *** Service and industrial robots are expected to be more autonomous and work effectively around/ alongside humans. This implies that robots should have special capabilities, such as interpreting and understanding human intentions in different domains. The major challenge is to find appropriate mechanisms to explain the observed raw sensor signals such as poses, velocities, distances, forces, etc., in a way that robots are able to make informative and high-level descriptive models out of that. These models will, for instance, permit the understanding of, what is the meaning of the observations/demonstrations, infer how they could generate/produce a similar behavior in other conditions/domains?, and more importantly, allow robots to communicate with the user/operator about why they infer that behavior. One promising way to achieve that is using high-level semantic representations. Several methods have been proposed, for example, linguistic approaches, syntactic approaches, graphical models, etc. This special issue is focused on highlighting the recent developments in semantic reasoning representations and semantic policy generation from low level (sensory signal) to high level (planning and execution). More importantly, this special issue will gather information about various bottom-up and top-down approaches for semantic action perception and executions in different domains. Furthermore, we are aiming to compare various state-of-the-art approaches for generic action and reasoning representations in both computer vision and robotic communities, looking for a common ground to combine assumable different approaches for autonomous capability and reliability. Overall, this special issue aims to present the main benefits of this new emerging type of methods such as allowing robots to learn generalized semantic models for different domains as well as the next breakthrough topics in this area, e.g. the scalability of the learned models that can adapt to new scenarios/domains in a way that the robot can transfer all the acquired knowledge and experience from existing data to new domains with very little human intervention. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: *AI-Based Methods --Learning and adaptive systems & Probability and statistical methods --Action grammars/libraries & Spatiotemporal event encoding --Machine learning techniques for semantic representations *Reasoning Methods in Robotics and Automation --Signal to symbol transition (Symbol grounding) & Different levels of abstraction --Semantics of manipulation actions & Semantic policy representation --Context modeling methods *Human Behavior Recognition --Learning from demonstration & Object-action relations --Bottom-up and top-down perception *Task, Geometric, and Dynamic Level Plans and Policies --PDDL high-level planning & Task and motion planning methods *Human-Robot interaction --Prediction of human intentions & Linking linguistic and visual data *** Guest editors *** Karinne Ramirez-Amaro, Technical University of Munich, https://www.ics.ei.tum.de/people/ramirez Yezhou Yang, Arizona State University, USA, https://yezhouyang.engineering.asu.edu Neil T. Dantam, Colorado School of Mines, USA, http://www.neil.dantam.name/ Eren Erdal Aksoy, Lund University, Sweden, http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/lucat/user/er0201ak Gordon Cheng, Technical University of Munich, https://www.ics.ei.tum.de/en/people/cheng -- Dr.-Ing. Karinne Ramirez Amaro Institute for Cognitive Systems Technische Universitaet Muenchen Address: Karlstr. 45, 2.OG. 80333 Munich, Germany Room: 2008 Web page: http://web.ics.ei.tum.de/~karinne/Ramirez/index.html email: karinne.ramirez(a)tum.de Telephone: +49-89-289-26791

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Call for Participation: RoboCup@Home Education Challenge 2017 @ RCAP 2017
by Jeffrey Tan 17 Oct '17

17 Oct '17

=== RoboCup@Home Education Challenge 2017 @ RCAP 2017 === December 12 ~ 18, 2017 Bangkok, Thailand http://www.robocupathomeedu.org <<Introduction>> RoboCup@Home Education is a special education program providing support for new teams in the context of a simplified RoboCup@Home competition oriented on forming new teams and preparing them to the main competitions. After running successfully for 3 years in RoboCup Japan Open 2015, 2016, 2017, the RoboCup@Home Education Challenge will be hosted in RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2017 [http://www.robocup-ap2017.org]. With the educational purpose and to promote new team participation, robot building workshop sessions will be conducted before the competition to facilitate inexperienced teams. - Workshop and Setup: December 12 ~ 14, 2017 - Competition: December 15 ~ 17, 2017 For more details and competition rules, please visit http://www.robocupathomeedu.org/challenges/robocup-home-education-challenge… <<How to Participate>> 1. Interested teams are required to apply by sending an email with the following information to the Organizing Committee oc(a)robocupathomeedu.org - Team Name: - Country/Region: - Affiliation: - Team Leader Name: - E-mail: The e-mail subject should be: [@HomeEDU2017] (Your Team Name) 2. A registration code will be sent to the e-mail above to proceed the registration at http://www.robocup-ap2017.org/en/registration.php <<Important Dates>> Application: October 10 - November 10, 2017 Registration: October 10 - December 8, 2017 Please visit the official website for more information. You can contact us via oc(a)robocupathomeedu.org Best Regards, RoboCup@Home Education Challenge 2017 Organizing Committee

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[@Home2018] Call for Participation: Open Platform League
by Mauricio Matamoros 12 Oct '17

12 Oct '17

Call for Participation RoboCup@Home Open Platform League 2018 June 16 - June 22, 2018 (Montreal, Canada) http://www.robocup2018.org http://www.robocupathome.org/ https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook *Note:* The qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home 2018 will be differentiated for the three sub-leagues (OPL, DSPL, SSPL) to better accommodate different organization needs. For each call please visit http://www.robocupathome.org/. --------------------------------------------- RoboCup is an international scientific initiative with the goal to advance the state of the art of intelligent robots through competitions (RoboCup@Home, RoboCup Soccer, RoboCup Rescue, RoboCup@Work and RoboCup Junior). The RoboCup@Home league aims to develop service and assistive robot technology with high relevance for future personal domestic applications. It is the largest international annual competition for autonomous service robots and is part of the RoboCup initiative. A set of benchmark tests is used to evaluate the robots' abilities and performance in a realistic home environment setting. Focus lies on the following domains but is not limited to: Human-Robot-Interaction and Cooperation, Navigation and Mapping in dynamic environments, Computer Vision and Object Recognition under natural light conditions, Object Manipulation, Adaptive Behaviors, Behavior Integration, Ambient Intelligence, Standardization and System Integration. This message describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home League 2018. Important dates: Sept. 22, 2017 Publication of the Call for Participation Oct. 15, 2017 Deadline for Intention of Participation Nov. 5, 2017 Deadline for submission of qualification material and preregistration. (Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website). Nov. 26, 2017 Qualification announcement Feb. 25, 2018 Deadline for Participation Confirmation The qualification procedure consists of the following two steps: Step 1) Intention of Participation (strongly recommended) The team sends an email to the Organizing Committee (oc(a)robocupathome.org) to indicate your intention to participate in the RoboCup@Home 2018 event, including the following basic information: Team Name: League: Open Platform League Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Web site: Only one team leader can be specified per team. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Participation] (YourTeamName) Please check the email is encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. ***** Deadline: Sunday, 15th Oct. 2017 23:59 GMT ****** Step 2) Qualification Material Submission (mandatory) The team ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee ( oc(a)robocupathome.org) to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup@Home 2018 event. Please fill in the following information: Team Name: League: Open Platform League Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Rank in local tournaments: Link to a team video: Link to a team web site devoted to their efforts: Team Description Paper (TDP) attached to the email based on the official template. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Participation] (YourTeamName) Considerations: - Only one platform can be specified per team. - Only one team leader can be specified per team. - Only one contact email can be specified per team. - All the publications and software to be evaluated for qualification ***MUST*** be in the team's website. - The email must be encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. ***** Deadline: Sunday, Nov. 5, 2017 23:59 GMT ****** Step 3) Participation confirmation (mandatory) All qualified teams ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee ( oc(a)robocupathome.org) to confirm (or cancel) their participation in the RoboCup@Home 2018 event. Confirming attendance implies that the team has sufficient resources to register commits to attend to the event. To confirm participation, please fill in the following information: Team Name: League: Open Platform League Country: Hereby [Team Name] of [Country] confirms/revokes its attendance to the RoboCup@Home Open Platform League. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Confirmation] (YourTeamName) *Remark:* Qualified teams who miss the participation confirmation will be disqualified automatically. ***** Deadline: Sunday, Feb. 25, 2018 23:59 GMT ****** Instructions for the Team Video =========================== In order to proof a running hardware, each team has to provide a qualification video. As a minimum requirement for qualification, the video must show the robot(s) successfully solving a task involving the integration of at least 5 different abilities, such as: environmental reasoning, high-level task planning, human-robot interaction, localization, manipulation, object recognition, people recognition, etc. Is strongly advised to show at least one Stage 2 test of the current or last year's rulebook. *Remarks:* - The shown task execution must look continuous, smooth, and robust. - When speeding-up video, the speed factor must be indicated. - The language spoken and shown in the video must be English. When using any other languages, translations must be included. - We strongly suggest upload videos to Youtube. - Videos sent will be uploaded/displayed in the league's youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists" <http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists> *Copyright note:*When sending videos for qualification, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, modify, distribute, upload, publish, and use the multimedia material to promote the event and the league as we find convenient. Instructions for the TDP ======================== The TDP is an 8-pages long scientific paper, detailing information on the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, while including also the following: - Innovative technology and scientific contribution - Focus of research/research interests - Re-usability of the system for other research groups - Applicability of the robot in the real world - Photo(s) of the robot (in annex). - Brief, compact list of the 3rd party robot's software (e.g. ROS vision should be included, but not OpenCV. In annex). - Brief, compact description of the robot's hardware (in annex). - Brief, compact description of all external computing devices, if any (in annex). For the TDP, please use the Springer LNAI format <http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0> used in the RoboCup Symposium submissions and limit yourself to 8 pages without altering margins or spacing. You may download a template for the TDP from here <https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/TDPTemplate>. *Remark: *The language for the TDP, its graphics, tables, images, and all additional content must be English. Content in other languages must be translated. Instructions for the Web site ========================== While the TDP goes into detail about the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, the website should be designed for a broader audience, including: - Photos of the robot(s) - Videos of the robot(s) - Description of the approaches and information on scientific achievements - Relevant publications (last 5 years, preferably available to download) - Link to repositories with software for the community - Team members - Previous participation in RoboCup - Participation and rankings in local RoboCup tournaments Evaluation criteria: ================= Qualification materials will be judged by the following criteria: - Team description paper (clarity, scientific contributions, re-usability by the league, applicability in real world) - Qualification Video (navigation, human-robot interaction, people/object recognition, object manipulation and new features) - Performance in local tournaments and previous competitions. - Website (multimedia, publications from last 5 years, downloadable content, open-source software and other contributions) - Relevant Scientific contribution/publications (downloadable papers and open-source software) - Novelty of approach (what you do is new for @Home) We encourage teams to produce self-explicative videos for a general audience where complex tasks are solved. For Team Description Papers focus on the scientific contribution and avoid brief descriptions of the overall system. *Note to experienced competitors:* Major changes are being done in the rulebook. You may download the latest version from: https://github.com/ RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook. With kind regards, and looking forward to see your team in Montreal, The 2018 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees

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RCAP2017 @HOME League Qualified team announcement
by Dr. KANJANAPAN SUKVICHAI 12 Oct '17

12 Oct '17

Dear @Home Teams, As the LOC of RCAP2017, I am glad to announce the qualified team who qualified for participating in the RoboCup Asia Pacific 2017 RoboCup@Home League. Here is the list of qualified teams: @Home Open Platform & EDU * DONGYANG Thailand * KameRider OPL China * Machinilog Pakistan * MRL@home Iran * Skuba JR Thailand * Sun@Home China @Home Social Standard Platform * Center for Robolution India * KameRider SSPL China Our general qualifying process is based on the team qualification materials (Videos & TDP). Qualified Team Videos show robots solving complex tasks that require full integration of most abilities used in @Home Teams the registration code, visa info., invitation letter and etc, will be provided by RCAP 2017 office (info(a)robocup-ap2017.org [1] ) See you in Bangkok Thank you, -- Dr. KANJANAPAN SUKVICHAI RoboCitizen Laboratory. Dept. of Electrical Engineering. Kasetsart University. Links: ------ [1] mailto:info@robocup-ap2017.org

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Call for Participation: RoboCup@Home Social Standard Platform League 2018 - Deadline October 15, 2017
by Luca Iocchi 09 Oct '17

09 Oct '17

Dear @Home teams, if you are interested in participating in RoboCup@Home 2018 Social Standard Platform League (with SoftBank Pepper robot) in Montreal, please remind that the deadline to submit the qualification material is ***October 15, 2017*** More details are available in http://www.robocupathome.org/cfp-sspl-2018 Best regards, Luca Iocchi (on behalf of RoboCup@Home OC)

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Announcement of Qualified teams for the RoboCup Asia Pacific 2017 (RCAP2017) @Home Open Platform League.
by Dr. KANJANAPAN SUKVICHAI 03 Oct '17

03 Oct '17

Dear @Home Teams, As the LOC of RCAP2017, I glad to announce the qualified team who qualified for participating in the RoboCup Asia Pacific 2017 @Home Open Platform League. Here is the list of qualified teams: * DONGYANG Thailand * KameRider OPL China * Machinilog Pakistan * MRL@home Iran * Skuba JR Thailand * Sun@Home China Our general qualifying process is based on the team qualification materials (Videos & TDP). Qualified Team Videos show robots solving complex tasks that require full integration of most abilities used in @Home -- Dr. KANJANAPAN SUKVICHAI RoboCitizen Laboratory. Dept. of Electrical Engineering. Kasetsart University.

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Final CFP: RoboCup@Home Domestic Standard Platform User Teams (Deadline Extended)
by Komei Sugiura 23 Sep '17

23 Sep '17

# Deadline Extended # Call for Proposals: RoboCup@Home Standard Platform User Teams * New Deadline: Oct. 7, 2017 23:59 PST * The RoboCup@Home league aims to develop service and assistive robot technology with high relevance for future personal domestic applications [ http://www.robocupathome.org/ ]. RoboCup@Home Domestic Standard Platform League (RoboCup@Home DSPL) is part of RoboCup@Home, and is a competition of standard platform robots. To participate in RoboCup@Home DSPL, you are required to have the standard platform, Toyota Human Support Robot (HSR). We invite teams of highly motivated researchers/engineers/students who will participate in RoboCup 2018 Montreal, to apply for the HSR robot. ## 0. Conditions: HSR Up to 12 user teams will be selected. The HSR will be leased as a part of Joint Research. The Joint Researcher may need to bear annual cost sharing with amount of 1.2 million Japanese Yen approximately. Depending on the option of contract, annual cost may not be charged for one year. If the user team participates in RoboCup 2018 and meets certain conditions, the same option may be applied for another year. For detailed conditions, visit [ http://www.robocupathome.org/athome-spl/hsr_condition18 ] ## 1. How to obtain a Standard Platform ## 1.1 Proposal submission Proposals should be sent to the Selection Committee as follows. The Proposals are evaluated through peer-review process. To: spl-sc(a)robocupathome.org Subject: [@Home-DSPL] (YourTeamName) Body: (Please fill in the following basic information) === 1. Team Name: 2. Country: 3. Affiliation: 4. Team Leader Name: 5. Contact information (E-mail): 6. Link to a team web site: 7. Proposal as an attachment file === ### 1.2 Additional notes on Proposals * The Proposal must be submitted in a pdf format * The size of the Proposal is limited to _6MB_ * A team can apply for only one platform. If identical Proposals are submitted to apply for both platforms, they are automatically rejected. ## 2. Deadline for Proposal submissions Oct. 7, 2017 23:59 PST (extended) ## 3. Instructions for the Website The information to be placed on the website should include the following: * Team members * Description of the approaches and information on scientific achievements * Relevant publications (last 5 years, preferably with links for download) * Relevant photos/videos that show the skills of the team * Link to repositories with software for the community (optional) * Previous participation in RoboCup (optional) ## 4. Instructions for the Proposal The Proposal must be based on the official league Team Description Paper (TDP) template. It should be in a pdf format and must contain the following information: * Description of the approach planned to be implemented on the robot * List of externally available components that are planned to be implemented - Open source software, web services, etc. * Innovative technology and scientific contribution * Focus of research/research interests * Re-usability of the system for other research groups * Applicability of the approach in the real world The Proposal should go into detail about the technical and scientific approach, but the website should be designed for a broader audience. The length of the Proposal is limited to 6 pages. Please use the same Springer LNAI format used in the RoboCup Symposium submissions. No change in margins, paragraphs and font size are allowed. http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0 You may download the template from https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/TDPTemplate.git ## 5. Evaluation criteria The Proposals will be judged by the following criteria: * Proposal - Clarity, scientific contributions, re-usability by the league, applicability in real world * Website - Multimedia, publications from past 5 years, downloadable content, open-source software and other contributions * Relevant scientific publications * Open-source software ## 6. Contact Please send any questions to: spl-sc(a)robocupathome.org ## 7. Important notes * The suppliers are not allowed to sell, export, lease and/or ship their products to natural or legal persons and to entities and countries which are subject to international sanctions or prohibitions. Since Selection Committee cannot answer this issue, please ask the supplier directly. - The contact email address about Toyota HSR: xr-hsr-info(a)mail.toyota.co.jp * Being selected as a user team does not mean that the team is qualified to participate in RoboCup 2018 Montreal. Team qualification will be separately conducted in February 2018. * After selected as a Standard Platform user team, the team has to make an agreement with the supplier in compliance with the supplier's instructions. Best Regards, Komei Sugiura, Luca Iocchi, Caleb Rascon, Kai Chen, Sven Wachsmuth RoboCup@Home Standard Platform League Selection Committee.

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[RoboCup@Home 2018] Call for Participation
by Mauricio Matamoros 23 Sep '17

23 Sep '17

Call for Participation RoboCup@Home Open Platform League 2018 July 25 - July 30, 2018 (Montreal, Canada) http://www.robocup2018.org http://www.robocupathome.org/ https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook *Note:* The qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home 2018 will be differentiated for the three sub-leagues (OPL, DSPL, SSPL) to better accommodate different organization needs. For each call please visit http://www.robocupathome.org/. The Open Platform League of RoboCup@Home may issue up to two Calls for Participation. In the first CFP, held in 2017, up to 12 teams may be selected and must send a participation confirmation before February 25th, 2018. When not all 12 qualified teams confirms their attendance, a second CFP will be issued. All teams applying in the second CFP will be considered as confirmed in case of qualify. Non-attending confirmed teams will be banned from @Home (all Leagues) for 3 years. --------------------------------------------- RoboCup is an international scientific initiative with the goal to advance the state of the art of intelligent robots through competitions (RoboCup@Home, RoboCup Soccer, RoboCup Rescue, RoboCup@Work and RoboCup Junior). The RoboCup@Home league aims to develop service and assistive robot technology with high relevance for future personal domestic applications. It is the largest international annual competition for autonomous service robots and is part of the RoboCup initiative. A set of benchmark tests is used to evaluate the robots' abilities and performance in a realistic home environment setting. Focus lies on the following domains but is not limited to: Human-Robot-Interaction and Cooperation, Navigation and Mapping in dynamic environments, Computer Vision and Object Recognition under natural light conditions, Object Manipulation, Adaptive Behaviors, Behavior Integration, Ambient Intelligence, Standardization and System Integration. This message describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home League 2018. Important dates: Sept. 22, 2017 Publication of the Call for Participation Oct. 15, 2017 Deadline for Intention of Participation Nov. 5, 2017 Deadline for submission of qualification material and preregistration. (Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website). Mar. 26, 2017 Qualification announcement Feb. 25, 2018 Deadline for Participation Confirmation The qualification procedure consists of the following two steps: Step 1) Intention of Participation (strongly recommended) The team sends an email to the Organizing Committee (oc(a)robocupathome.org) to indicate your intention to participate in the RoboCup@Home 2018 event, including the following basic information: Team Name: League: Open Platform League Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Web site: Only one team leader can be specified per team. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Participation] (YourTeamName) Please check the email is encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. ***** Deadline: Sunday, 15th Oct. 2017 23:59 GMT ****** Step 2) Qualification Material Submission (mandatory) The team ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee ( oc(a)robocupathome.org) to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup@Home 2018 event. Please fill in the following information: Team Name: League: Open Platform League Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Rank in local tournaments: Link to a team video: Link to a team web site devoted to their efforts: Team Description Paper (TDP) attached to the email based on the official template. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Participation] (YourTeamName) Considerations: - Only one platform can be specified per team. - Only one team leader can be specified per team. - Only one contact email can be specified per team. - All the publications and software to be evaluated for qualification ***MUST*** be in the team's website. - The email must be encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. ***** Deadline: Sunday, Nov. 5, 2017 23:59 GMT ****** Step 3) Participation confirmation (mandatory) All qualified teams ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee ( oc(a)robocupathome.org) to confirm (or cancel) their participation in the RoboCup@Home 2018 event. Confirming attendance implies that the team has sufficient resources to register commits to attend to the event. To confirm participation, please fill in the following information: Team Name: League: Open Platform League Country: Hereby [Team Name] of [Country] confirms/revokes its attendance to the RoboCup@Home Open Platform League. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Confirmation] (YourTeamName) *Remark:* Qualified teams who miss the participation confirmation will be disqualified automatically. ***** Deadline: Sunday, Feb. 25, 2018 23:59 GMT ****** Instructions for the Team Video =========================== In order to proof a running hardware, each team has to provide a qualification video. As a minimum requirement for qualification, the video must show the robot(s) successfully solving a task involving the integration of at least 5 different abilities, such as: environmental reasoning, high-level task planning, human-robot interaction, localization, manipulation, object recognition, people recognition, etc. Is strongly advised to show at least one Stage 2 test of the current or last year's rulebook. *Remarks:* - The shown task execution must look continuous, smooth, and robust. - When speeding-up video, the speed factor must be indicated. - The language spoken and shown in the video must be English. When using any other languages, translations must be included. - We strongly suggest upload videos to Youtube. - Videos sent will be uploaded/displayed in the league's youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists" <http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists> *Copyright note:*When sending videos for qualification, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, modify, distribute, upload, publish, and use the multimedia material to promote the event and the league as we find convenient. Instructions for the TDP ======================== The TDP is an 8-pages long scientific paper, detailing information on the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, while including also the following: - Innovative technology and scientific contribution - Focus of research/research interests - Re-usability of the system for other research groups - Applicability of the robot in the real world - Photo(s) of the robot (in annex). - Brief, compact list of the 3rd party robot's software (e.g. ROS vision should be included, but not OpenCV. In annex). - Brief, compact description of the robot's hardware (in annex). - Brief, compact description of all external computing devices, if any (in annex). For the TDP, please use the Springer LNAI format <http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0> used in the RoboCup Symposium submissions and limit yourself to 8 pages without altering margins or spacing. You may download a template for the TDP from here <https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/TDPTemplate>. *Remark: *The language for the TDP, its graphics, tables, images, and all additional content must be English. Content in other languages must be translated. Instructions for the Web site ========================== While the TDP goes into detail about the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, the website should be designed for a broader audience, including: - Photos of the robot(s) - Videos of the robot(s) - Description of the approaches and information on scientific achievements - Relevant publications (last 5 years, preferably available to download) - Link to repositories with software for the community - Team members - Previous participation in RoboCup - Participation and rankings in local RoboCup tournaments Evaluation criteria: ================= Qualification materials will be judged by the following criteria: - Team description paper (clarity, scientific contributions, re-usability by the league, applicability in real world) - Qualification Video (navigation, human-robot interaction, people/object recognition, object manipulation and new features) - Performance in local tournaments and previous competitions. - Website (multimedia, publications from last 5 years, downloadable content, open-source software and other contributions) - Relevant Scientific contribution/publications (downloadable papers and open-source software) - Novelty of approach (what you do is new for @Home) We encourage teams to produce self-explicative videos for a general audience where complex tasks are solved. For Team Description Papers focus on the scientific contribution and avoid brief descriptions of the overall system. *Note to experienced competitors:* Major changes are being done in the rulebook. You may download the latest version from: https://github.com/ RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook. With kind regards, and looking forward to see your team in Nagoya, The 2018 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees

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