*First Call for Participation* RoboCup@Home 2024 (DSPL · OPL · SSPL)

July 15 to 21, 2024 (Eindhoven, Netherlands) https://2024.robocup.org https://athome.robocup.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 page describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home 2024.

Important dates:

Oct. 12, 2023 Publication of the Call for Participation Oct. 30, 2023 Deadline for submission of participation intention. Nov. 27, 2023 Deadline for submission of qualification material.

(Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website). Jan. 08, 2024 Qualification announcement Jan. 29, 2024 Deadline for Participation Confirmation

The qualification procedure consists of the following steps:

Step 1) Participation Intention Submission (advised)

Teams are invited to send an email to the Organizing Committee (rc-home-oc[at]lists.robocup.org) stating their intention to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup@Home 2024 event. Please fill in the following information:

Team Name: League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ] Country: Affiliation: Hereby team [Your Team Name] expresses its intention of taking part in the 2024 RoboCup@Home.

The e-mail subject should be:[@Home2024-Participation] (YourTeamName)

Considerations:

* Please keep your team names short. * Only one league can be specified per team. * The email must be encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set.

/***** Deadline: Monday, October. 30, 2023 23:59 GMT ******/

Step 2) Qualification Material Submission (mandatory)

The team ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee (rc-home-oc[at]lists.robocup.org) to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup@Home 2024 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:[@Home2024-Qualification] (YourTeamName)

Considerations:

* Only one platform can be specified per team. * Only one team leader can be specified per team. * Only one team video url 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, Nov. 27, 2023 23:59 GMT ******/

Step 3) Participation confirmation (mandatory)

All qualified teams ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee (rc-home-oc[at]lists.robocup.org) to confirm (or cancel) their participation in the RoboCup@Home 2024 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 | forfeits] participation in the the RoboCup@Home [League].

The e-mail subject should be:[@Home2024-Confirmation] (YourTeamName)

*Remark:*Qualified teams who miss the participation confirmation automatically waiver participation, freeing their for the Second Call for Participation. Teams can resubmit materials during the Second CFP.

/***** Deadline: Monday, Jan. 29, 2024 23:59 GMT ******/

Instructions for the Qualification Material

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.

*Remarks:*

* The video should not exceed the average time for a test (max. 10min) * 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 as closed captions must be included. * We strongly suggest captioning the videos, particularly for the robot speech and participants with strong accents. * We strongly suggest upload videos to Youtube. * Selected videos sent will be uploaded/displayed in the league’s youtube channelhttp://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists%E2%80%9D http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists * *Standard Platforms Only:*Teams ***MUST*** use the standard robot in their Team Video.

*HINT:*It is strongly advised to show your robot(s) smoothly and accurately solving complex tasks relevant for @Home that exceed the minimum requirements. This may be inspired by any of the Stage II tests of the 2019, 2022, and 2023 rulebooks.

*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:

* TDP o Group’s research focus and interests. o Innovative technology and scientific contribution + Please specify when your research is being used by other teams or research groups + Please specify when you are using software from other teams o Brief, general description of the system when solving a [domestic] task (applicability in the real world) + The impact of your research must be clearly visible o Maximum length is*8 pages*(including figures and citations) * Annex o Photo(s) of the robot o Brief, compact list of the 3rd party robot’s software (e.g. include MoveIt/YOLO) o Brief, compact description of all external computing devices, if any o Brief, compact description of the robot’s hardware (OPL Only) o Please mark with an asterisk home-made software solutions o Annex should be appended after the References o There is no page limit for annex, but a maximum of one page is strongly encouraged * TDP length is*****8 pages + annex*****(any submissions over this length will be disqualified). * *DSPL and SSPL:*The robot depicted in the TDP or Team Video must be the league’s standard one.

For the TDP, please use theSpringer LNAI format http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0 (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 maydownload a template for the TDP from https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/TDPTemplatehttps://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.

*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.

***** Exceeding the number of pages will automatically void your application *****.

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 * Links to the qualification materials (TDP, Video) for the oncoming RoboCup

*Remark:*No IP addresses will be accepted as website.

*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.

Qualification and evaluation criteria:

In this first Call for Participation, up to 8 teams per league can be assigned a participation slot. In order to qualify, a team must meet the minimum selection requirements approved by the Executive Committee. However, meeting the minimum requirements won’t automatically grant a participation slot. Only the top 8 teams meeting the selection criterion will qualify for participation. Rejections are strongly advised to improve their qualification materials and apply in the second CFP.

Qualification materials will be judged by the following criteria:

* Team description paper (clarity, completeness, scientific contributions, re-usability by the league, applicability in real world) * Performance in local tournaments and previous competitions. * Qualification Video (number of demonstrated abilities, integration, difficulty of the task, applicability in real world) * 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.

With kind regards, and looking forward to see your team in Eindhoven, The 2024 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees

Call for Participation: https://athome.robocup.org/category/cfp/ https://athome.robocup.org/category/cfp/