June 2021 - RoboCup-humanoid - lists.robocup.org

TC and OC election
by RoboCup Humanoid League 25 Jun '21

25 Jun '21

Dear everyone, Tonight we will have the voting for TC and OC members of our league. We warmly encourage you to nominate yourself as a candidate for TC, OC or TC and OC positions on the following spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GzsAiit3ZIqVbOjKbgsMOr9IJkJbsS9goWC… Nomination is closing at 17:00pm (CEST time). We will create, then, an anonymous voting system. Best regards, Alessandra

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V-HSC: Important information & schedule for the setup days
by Maike Paetzel-Pruesmann 22 Jun '21

22 Jun '21

Dear teams, it is time we have all been waiting for - the virtual RoboCup starts tomorrow! In the Humanoid League, we will, as usually, kick off with two setup days. Tomorrow and Wednesday we will continue to run test sessions for teams. We start at 9am CEST and run test sessions all day long until 9pm CEST. You can request to test your software at any time during these hours and you may request more than one test per day. However, we will prioritize teams that have not been able to test their software as much as others did. We will still follow the same testing scheme we set up during the mock-competition to make sure we are not using test resources on teams that are not ready to play full games yet. We also have some infrastructural setup to carry out and some remaining bugs to fix on our side. We will hence take breaks during the testing time for these bug fixes and enhancements if necessary. As part of the infrastructural tests, we will also stream a few games during the setup days and will announce the streaming times on Discord on short notice. During the setup days as well as during the entire competition we will use the league's Discord server, *not* Underline, for OC announcements as well as communication with and between teams. If you have not joined our Discord server, please do so during the setup days: https://discord.gg/YTKCMugM We know that there is unfortunately not one time slot that is convenient for everyone to watch games and join the team leader meetings. Since RoboCup was supposed to be in France, we have decided to use CEST for creating the game and meeting schedules. For the setup days, we will meet at 6pm CEST on field C for a team leader meeting. Please have only one member per team join these meetings to keep the number of participants low and allow for discussions as much as possible. During the first team leader meeting on Tuesday, June 22nd, we will draw the first round robin groups for competition day number 1. We will also give an overview of the competition schedule and go over some organizational aspects of the competition. If necessary, we will also discuss remaining bugs in the AutoReferee or other parts of the infrastructural setup. Please note that we have made quite a few adjustments to the schedule after the last team leader voting. The current version can always be found on: https://humanoid.robocup.org/rc2021/ If you have any questions at any point during the setup days or the competition, don't hesitate to contact the organizers. Anyone on Discord with an [OC] in their name tag is part of the organization of this tournament. However, please abstain to message OC members personally unless they have explicitly asked you to DM them. The competition schedule is extremely tight for us organizers and requires us to work shifts, so not all members will always be available for questions. You are also welcome to join the "OC Table" voice channel if you would like to talk to us about something. RoboCup is not only a tournament, it is also a place for scientific and personal exchange, for getting together, talking with each other, exchanging ideas and learning from and with other teams. I would hence encourage all of you to stay available in the voice chats on Discords during the setup days and tournament, talk to the other teams, set up meetings on the public spaces if you would like to discuss certain aspects, and really make the most of this virtual competition. I hope to see all of you on Discord tomorrow! Cheers, Maike (for the Humanoid League OC)

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(no subject)
by Benjamin Wild 21 Jun '21

21 Jun '21

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Best robot model award 2021
by RoboCup Humanoid League 20 Jun '21

20 Jun '21

Dear teams, We will hold a best robot model award! This is a great opportunity for teams not only to have a trophy for the winning team and a certificate for second and third teams, but also for showing your efforts to other teams and a broader audience. The best model will be voted by a jury of several people not belonging to the TC/OC group. We are aiming in including representatives from trustees, other leagues (e.g. simulation league) and industries. This would be, therefore, a splendid occasion to see other teams’ process of modelling their virtual robots, and share scientific knowledges and innovative approaches between teams. The best robot will be voted according to the description and info of the teams’ robot, and on a short poster presentation made by each team. The poster presentation will be streamed live on Sunday 27/06 at 17:00 (CEST time). At the end of the teams’ presentation, the jury’s members will elect together the winner providing a short explanation for the choice. We will communicate the winning team soon after the voting on Sunday 27/06. The ceremony for the winner will be on the next day during the symposium. The poster presentation should highlight the quality and characteristics of your robot model. It should be on a pdf format, either one page that fit a normal HD screen or up to three slides. The presentation should last maximum 5 minutes. If you want to participate to the best robot model competition, please do inform me by Tuesday 22/06 (including the name of the presenter of the poster), and submit your poster by Sunday 27/06 at 12:00 (CEST) here -> https://www.dropbox.com/request/1HE1Sb03C575hyvHSgpD Best regards, Alessandra

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V-HSC Newsletter 12 - including urgent rule update voting!
by Maike Paetzel-Pruesmann 19 Jun '21

19 Jun '21

Dear Humanoid Teams, This is the twelfth Humanoid league newsletter summarizing the following updates: - Upcoming competition - Training schedule and status - Votes for the competition Upcoming competition ==================== There's only 3 days left before the setup-days (on June 22nd) and 5 days before the start of the competition (June 24th). All teams and organizers are working pretty hard to get the last elements prepared and there's a lot of activity in the Discord and the github of the league. Be sure to watch actively for announcements on the Discord server, since this will be our main way of communicating with you during the competition. Training schedule and status ============================ With the various training sessions since the mock-competition, we have now the following results: - 3/16 teams passed the short-game tests - 6/16 teams passed the penalty shootout test - 10/16 teams passed the walking test - 12/16 teams passed the connection test There is only one training session left (Sunday 8pm-11pm CEST) and keep in mind that you can only advance one step at a time. So please register to the next training session if you want to prepare for the setup days. During the two setup days, we will run intensive testing, but it might be hard for you to adapt if the first steps have not been successful. So if you have not registered for any training session yet, we highly suggest to make use of the one tomorrow. Sign-up for the test sessions is via Discord. Votes for the competition ========================= There are 2 important decisions that have to be taken with respect to the organization of the tournament and that require a vote from the team leaders. More precisely, with a current real-time factor of 0.07, we need to take measures to shorten the computation time per game and we would like the participating teams to vote which options for shortening the computation time they prefer. You will find all the details about this vote here: http://hrisurvey.research.it.uu.se/index.php/581742?lang=en Please vote by Sunday (tomorrow!) 23:59 CEST! We welcome all your questions and comments on the Discord channel and the Forum. Cheers, Maike & Ludovic (for the Humanoid League Organizing Committee)

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V-HSC Newsletter 11
by Ludovic Hofer 12 Jun '21

12 Jun '21

Dear Humanoid Teams, This is the eleventh Humanoid league newsletter summarizing the following updates: - Mock-competition - Training schedule - Specifications updates - Model validation - Rule updates and voting process - Updated Discord structure - Bug fixes Mock-competition ================ From June 4th to June 6th, 10 teams took part in the mock-competition. We noticed that many teams struggled connecting their robot control software to the robot model in the simulator and hence adapted our initial schedule to make testing easier and feedback to teams faster. This testing scheme will also be used until the beginning of the competition and is presented later in this document. Those 3 days of competition already allowed the organizers and the competitors to detect some bugs and discuss the implementation of the rules. You can already watch a few penalty shoot-outs and short games that were streamed on our twitch channel: <https://www.twitch.tv/robocuphumanoidleague> Training schedule ================= As previously mentioned, providing all the requested materials is a difficult step for the competitors since the games are run automatically, small details can lead to the robots unable to connect or to listen to the GameController. Therefore, we propose to all teams several training sessions to ensure that their robots are able to participate to the competition this year. The steps of the training are the following: 1. Model Verification 2. Connection test 3. Walking test 4. Penalty shoot-out 5. Short game 6. Full Game The upcoming sessions for testing on the competition infrastructure are: - Saturday 12th: 8h-11h - Monday 14th: 20h-23h - Wednesday 16th: 8h-11h - Friday 18th: 8h-11h - Sunday 20th: 20h-23h All times are CEST. You will find more details on how to register for training sessions and current progress of the teams on the humanoid league Discord. We strongly recommend all teams to register for the training sessions in order to make sure they are able to compete or to solve the problems they are facing. Note that you can only attempt the next step that you have not previously passed. Hence, it is not possible to request to play a full game if the connection test was not passed already. Please plan your time accordingly so you get through all steps before the competition starts. Specifications updates ====================== During the mock-competition we noticed some minor adjustments or clarifcations required to the specification documents. We performed the following updates: - Model specification v1.05: - Model constraints::Embedding a robot (additional requirement due to performance impact) - Appendix::Configuration of hand (clarification of the rule) - Simulator API v1.01: - Updating documentation on image format (images sent are BGR images and not RGB images) - First connection time can take up to 1m30 - Since the duration of a simulation step is variable, the robot control software needs to be able to handle at least 15 seconds without receiving messages from the simulator - Server specifications v1.02: - Clarification on the nvidia version used on the instances - A reference to an AMI for the clients is now available - Private logs can now be written in two different folders to allow teams to retrieve some logs more quickly than other, potentially larger ones You can always find the most recent version of all those documents at the head of the V-HSC page: <https://humanoid.robocup.org/hl-2021/v-hsc/> Model Validation ================ The deadline for submitting the model is today 23:59 AOE (Anywhere On Earth), so there is still a few hours to go. However, we have already started discussing with some teams to make sure all the teams are able to participate in the competition with their robots. During the upcoming days we will review the models and if we find anything that does not respect the rule, we will come back to you with requests for modifications. The list of the accepted robots will be updated regularly on: <https://humanoid.robocup.org/hl-2021/teams/> Rule updates and voting process =============================== During the the mock-competition, we have already noticed a few changes that may be desirable in the rule book or that were requested by the teams. As it was announced earlier, those rule changes will be voted by team leaders and will need a two third majority of the expressed votes to be accepted. A vote from team leader is requested on: <http://hrisurvey.research.it.uu.se/index.php/335921?lang=en> Please, vote only once per team. If your team participates to two different size classes, it can vote twice. The deadline for voting is Monday, June 14th 23:59 AoE. Updated Discord structure ========================= The Discord server of the league will be the main point of communication until the end of the competition. If you find technical problems, competitors and organizers are often pretty quick to answer them if you reach out on Discord. It also allows quick interactions with all TC members and allow us to bring an answer to your questions as quickly as possible while keeping an overview of the team requests. The global structure of the Discord is the following: - OC Area [V-HSC21]: The place for announcements and status update from the organizers, and an area for teams to ask organizational questions, request discord updates and inform that an update was made to a robot model. You will also find the organizers in the voice channel "OC-Table" during office hours, training sessions and the competition. - Public Area [V-HSC21]: Multiple channels for public discussions, both in written and vocal form - Team-Area-Kid [V-HSC21] and Team-Area-Adult [V-HSC21]: Each team has its own text and voice channels to communicate among themselves or with the organizers. The voice channel are accessible to everyone and we highly encourage teams to use this area during the competition and to get in touch with other teams in their voice channels. The text channels are team-internal and can only be accessed by the teams and the organizers. They are used for discussions and updates that only concern that specific team. - Thematic discussions: For all general public discussions. Make sure to join and ask us in the #discord-requests to give you access to your team channel: <https://discord.gg/3kv9ERvCEV> Simulator updates ================= Since the last public release and more particularly since the mock-competition, we brought many fixes to the simulator based on your feedback. Given the current timeline, we try to merge the fixes in the release branch as frequently as possible to avoid any delay. Therefore we are not sending release announcements anymore for the fixes. Here is a short list of the topics fixed or changed over the last few days: - The ball holding implementation was softened to trigger less false positives - Implementation of the check of the goalkeeper position during penalty shootout has been changed to be closer to the rules and trigger less false positives - Implementation of the removal penalty was updated - Score display during penalty shootouts was fixed - Synchronization of the GameController and the AutoReferee was improved Note that in order to run the latest version, you should update the GameController as well. Stay tuned for changes by watching our two official repositories: - <https://github.com/RoboCup-Humanoid-TC/webots> - <https://github.com/RoboCup-Humanoid-TC/GameController> We welcome all your questions and comments on the Discord channel and the Forum. Cheers, Ludovic (for the Humanoid League Organizing Committee)

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Commenters for the RoboCup Humanoid League games
by RoboCup Humanoid League 09 Jun '21

09 Jun '21

Hi everyone! We would like the games of the RoboCup Humanoid League to be fun and enjoyable for everyone, including visitors and public. For this reason, we are looking for commenters for the matches. Teams should volunteer one member for commenting their own games. Commenters can also be your teams’ previous members, alumni, etc. Please let us know the name/tag of a member for each team asap. We need to know before ahead to allow the commenters in the streaming space. Thanks! Alessandra

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New robocup-humanoid mailing list
by Oskar von Stryk 08 Jun '21

08 Jun '21

Dear robocup-humanoid subscribers, RoboCup IT Team has been migrating the mailing lists which have been hosted at Georgia Tech, to a server at robocup.org, because the old mailing list is being blocked by an increasing number of servers. The new address of the list (to be used to send messages to all the subscribers) is robocup-humanoid(a)lists.robocup.org The old address will be closed. Therefore, please update the list address with the new one and remove the old one. Please note that the old passwords are not usable anymore. In order to get your password please enter your email address on https://lists.robocup.org/options/ [1]robocup-humanoid [1] and then click on the remind button. You will receive an email with your password immediately. In addition, you can share the list link via https://lists.robocup.org/listinfo/ [2]robocup-humanoid [2] Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions. Best regards, Oskar (for RoboCup IT Team) Links: ------ [1] https://lists.robocup.org/options/robocup-humanoid [2] https://lists.robocup.org/listinfo/robocup-humanoid

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