- RoboCup-humanoid - lists.robocup.org

vRoHOW 2021 - Call for participation
by Patrick Göttsch 03 Nov '21

03 Nov '21

Dear fellow RoboCup teams, This is the Call for participation of the virtual Robotic Hamburg Open Workshop (vRoHOW) 2021. The event will take place over the weekend from 3rd to 5th of December. As last year, the event will be driven by contributions in the form of talks, presentations and workshops. Discord will be our venue with multiple rooms and areas prepared. Combined with additional tools and your participation we will bring the virtual RoHOW to life. For participation do the following: Send a message to hulks(a)tuhh.de until the 15th of November 2021 expressing your interest in participation. This message should include your team name and a contact person. There will be no participation fee! We are looking forward to see you during the event! Keep safe and stay healthy Team HULKs

1 0

[meetings] First call for proposals for Special Sessions, Workshops and Tutorials at the 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2022)
by Alessandra Rossi 30 Oct '21

30 Oct '21

Dear colleagues, Apologies for any cross-posting Please find attached below the first call for proposals for Special Sessions, Workshops and Tutorials at the 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2022) that will be held in Naples (Italy) on August 29th - September 2nd, 2022. More information can be also found on the website and social media: http://ro-man2022.org IG: @ieeeroman2022 Twitter: @ROMAN2022ieee Facebook: @ieeeroman2022 For any questions and further information about the Special Session and Workshop/Tutorial proposal, please email workshop(a)roman2022.org or contact info(a)roman2022.org. Kindest regards, Alessandra Rossi, Minsu Jang and Tariq Iqbal Publicity Chairs Dr. Alessandra Rossi Postdoctoral researcher PRISCA research lab University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy Visiting Researcher Fellow of the Higher Education Academy Adaptive Systems Research Group University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom ================================================================================== *** FIRST CALL FOR SPECIAL SESSIONS, WORKSHOPS, AND TUTORIALS *** 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2022) August 29th - September 2nd, 2022 Naples, Italy http://ro-man2022.org IG: @ieeeroman2022 Twitter: @ROMAN2022ieee Facebook: @ieeeroman2022 ================================================================================== The RO-MAN2022 Organising Committee invites proposals for Special Sessions, Workshops and Tutorials to be held during the 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication in Naples, Italy from August 29th to September 2nd, 2022. The RO-MAN conference is a leading forum where state-of-the-art innovative results, the latest developments as well as future perspectives relating to robot and human interactive communication are presented and discussed. The conference covers a wide range of topics related to Robot and Human Interactive Communication, involving theories, methodologies, technologies, empirical and experimental studies. Proposals related to the study of robotic technology, psychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, human factors, ethics and policies, interaction-based robot design and other topics related to human-robot interaction are welcome. This year's theme is “Social, asocial, and antisocial robots”. One of its goals is to explore how to create robots that are capable of being welcomed as our assistants and companions in society while, at the same time, not being perceived as “asocial” or “antisocial”. A second aim is to understand how we can create robots perceived as facilitators of the natural development of human beings and communities, rather than obstacles. PROPOSAL SUBMISSION DEADLINES SPECIAL SESSIONS DEADLINE: JANUARY 10, 2022 WORKSHOPS/TUTORIALS DEADLINE: JANUARY 10, 2022 SPECIAL SESSION PROPOSALS Prospective special session organisers are invited to submit a proposal via the main conference's submission system. The organisers of the accepted special sessions will be responsible for the high-quality peer-review of the submitted papers according to IEEE standards (i.e. at least 2 anonymous peer-reviews). The organisers will be Associate Editors (AE) for the proposed session, and they will be responsible for assigning reviewers and judging the submitted paper for the special session. Proposals should include the following information: • Title: Please propose a title that shows the relevance of the session for the RO-MAN community and the innovativeness of the proposed topic. • Aims and scope: Please explain why the chosen topic is novel and relevant, with the potential to contribute to the growth of the RO-MAN community, and is also suitable for either the conference theme or a new emerging theme with potentially high impact. • Tentative speakers: Please provide a list of prospective contributing authors and tentative titles. Special Sessions are normally expected to have 4 to 6 papers. Invited speakers or session-related demonstrations (such as renowned speakers or industrial talks) could be a part of the Special Session. • Organisers and biographies: Please provide a short bio-sketch of the session organisers including their experience in the topic of the Special Session. The guidelines to submit a special session proposal are available at the Special Session section on the RO-MAN 2022 website or by clicking on this link. WORKSHOPS and TUTORIALS PROPOSALS Workshops and tutorials should focus on key areas of established and emerging research, and should provide a forum for participants to exchange new ideas and discuss recent results. We encourage proposals for topics that have substantial community interest, with a creative and innovative program, led by recognised leaders in their fields, that will attract a broad and diverse audience. Organisers of approved workshops and tutorials will be asked to create and maintain a dedicated webpage, which will be used to promote the workshop/tutorial, and disseminate relevant and updated information. Proposals should include the following information: • Title • Format (indicate full or half day, tutorial or workshop) • Main organiser (one person only, complete address, phone, and email) • Co-organisers (complete address, and email) • Previous editions (if any) • Statement of objectives • Intended audience • List of speakers • List of topics • Plan to solicit participation • Workshop organisation • Plan for inclusion, diversity and equity The guidelines to submit a workshop/tutorial proposal are available at the Workshop and Tutorial section on the RO-MAN 2022 website or by clicking on this link. ================================================================================== The primary criteria in the evaluation of special session and workshop/tutorial proposals will be the timeliness of the topics, the quality, track record, and diversity of the proposers and speakers, the coherence of the proposal, the novelty or creativity, and the expected value added to the overall conference. Aspects of diversity that will be considered include the age, gender, national origin, background, and workplace of the proposers and speakers. We will give priority to proposals that fully follow these requirements. Moreover, we encourage the submission of workshops, tutorial and special sessions organized by communities that are under-represented within the RO-MAN activities. For any questions and further information about the Special Session and Workshop/Tutorial proposal, please email workshop(a)roman2022.org or contact info(a)roman2022.org. SPECIAL SESSION CO-CHAIRS JongSuk Choi, Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KR) Mariacarla Staffa, University of Naples Parthenope (IT) Kerstin Haring, University of Denver (USA) TUTORIAL / WORKSHOP CO-CHAIRS Amir Aly, University of Plymouth (UK) Daniel Riccio, University of Naples Federico II (IT) Raquel Ros, La Salle - Universitat Ramon Llull (ES)

1 0

[journal][cfp][HRI] Special issue in International Journal of Social Robotics "Trust, Acceptance and Social Cues in Human Robot Interaction"
by Alessandra Rossi 25 Oct '21

25 Oct '21

Dear colleagues, After the great success of the TRAITS (HRI 2021) and SCRITA (RO-MAN 2021) workshops, we are very pleased to announce the Special Issue “The Road to Successful HRI: Trust, Acceptance, Ethics, Social Signals and AI” of the International Journal of Social Robotics is open! The special issue aims at exploring successful HRIs from a multidisciplinary perspective, and how to shape the design of robots. The special issue will be open for submissions until January 31, 2022. We welcome submissions from all disciplines addressing topics that allow robots to 1) autonomously sense and react to the situation, people and the environment by integrating artificial intelligence (AI) techniques 2) such that people feel comfortable to interact with robots 3) and trust them to safely reach intended outcomes, and 4) by respecting ethical and legal principles. More information can be found on the website of both workshops TRAITS and SCRITA, and on the Journal page. Please do not hesitate to contact us for further information and questions using the emails below. Kind regards, Alessandra Dr. Alessandra Rossi Postdoctoral researcher PRISCA research lab University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy Visiting Researcher Fellow of the Higher Education Academy Adaptive Systems Research Group University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom =========================================================================================================================================== Call for Papers Special Issue on "The Road to Successful HRI: Trust, Acceptance, Ethics, Social Signals and AI.” International Journal of Social Robotics The design of natural human-robot dynamics is a key aspect for ensuring a successful and efficient lasting human-robot interaction (HRI). In particular, it is expected that a robot deployed in human populated environments not only needs to be able to successfully complete a task, involving perception, reasoning and decision-making of other agents and the surroundings, but also needs to show social intelligence to engage people in effective and natural interactions. In such interactions, robots and people need to be able to cooperate to reach a joint goal, which can only be achieved if people accept and trust robots to complete their task and prevent any potential harm (emotional or physical) to people, the environment and themselves. The agents involved need to correctly interpret each other's behaviour, and act accordingly. Finally, several studies have shown that socially aware robots are perceived more positively by people in social contexts and situations. Robots, therefore, should be able to understand and use people's direct and indirect modes of communication, such as verbal and non-verbal cues. Moreover, robots should be able to adapt their behaviours to satisfy people's needs (such as personality, emotions, preferences, habits), and incorporating reactive and predictive meta-cognition models to reason about the situational context (such as its own erroneous behaviours) and provide socially acceptable behaviours. This special issue will explore successful HRI from a multidisciplinary perspective and shape the design of robots, so that robots: 1) autonomously sense and react to the situation, people and the environment by integrating artificial intelligence (AI) techniques 2) such that people feel comfortable to interact with robots 3) and trust them to safely reach intended outcomes, and 4) by respecting ethical and legal principles. Submissions are invited from leading researchers in the fields including, but not limited, to the following topics of interest: ● Impact of social cues on trust in human-robot interaction ● The impact of social robots on acceptance in HRI ● Measuring trust in human-robot interaction ● Trust violation and recovery mechanism in HRI ● Effects of humans’ acceptance on trust of robots ● Humans sense of control and trust in robots ● Trust and assistive robotics ● Overtrust in robots ● Antecedent of trust and human-robot trust ● Enhancing humans trust in robots ● User profiling and trust in human-robot interaction ● Evaluation of human-robot interaction quality ● Human factors affecting successful HRI ● Mental models in HRI ● XAI in HRI ● Trustworthy AI ● Legal frameworks for trustworthy robotics ● Ethics implications in HRI Important dates The submission deadline is January 31, 2022. The review process for submissions will start immediately after reception and accepted manuscripts will be published online with a DOI on an ongoing basis. How to submit your article All submissions must be original and may not be under review by another publication. Interested authors should consult the journal’s “Submission Guidelines” at https://www.springer.com/journal/12369/submission-guidelines Articles can be submitted through Editorial Manager: https://www.editorialmanager.com/soro/default.aspx The special issue is created as submission questionnaire in the system. When you submit your paper you will be asked if your paper belongs to a special issue. Please answer yes, and then select “S.I. The Road to Successful HRI: Trust, Acceptance, Ethics, Social Signals and AI” from the pull-down menu. All submitted papers will be reviewed on a peer review basis as soon as they are received. Accepted papers will become immediately available Online First until the complete Special Issue appears. Please feel free to contact us for further information or assistance. The Guest Editors: • Dr. Alessandra Rossi (lead guest editor): alessandra.rossi(a)unina.it • Dr. Patrick Holthaus: p.holthaus(a)herts.ac.uk • Antonio Andriella: aandriella(a)iri.upc.edu • Dr. Anouk van Maris: anouk.vanmaris(a)uwe.ac.uk • Sílvia Moros: s.moros-espanol(a)herts.ac.uk • Dr. Gabriella Lakatos: g.lakatos(a)herts.ac.uk • Dr. Marcus Scheunemann: m.scheunemann(a)herts.ac.uk

1 0

vRoHOW 2021 - save the date
by Patrick Göttsch 18 Oct '21

18 Oct '21

Dear fellow RoboCup teams, We are proud to announce the next virtual Robotic Hamburg Open Workshop (vRoHOW) 2021. The event will take place from 3th to 5th of December. This year's vRoHOW will have the same goals as every year: Exchanging knowledge in workshops and discussions, expanding your horizon in talks, and chatting together with a cold beer or soft drink. Discord will be our venue with multiple rooms and areas prepared. Combined with additional tools and your participation we will bring the virtual RoHOW to life. Sounds good? There will be no participation fee! A detailed "Call for participation" will follow in the near future. As we currently are in a creative and early planning stage, we encourage you to send us ideas, feedback or any other vRoHOW related input. Inspired by the captivating and warm atmosphere of previous RoHOWs, we are looking forward to build this virtual event with you together. See you soon Team HULKs

1 0

RoboCup Humanoid League Newsletter - October 2021
by Maike Paetzel-Pruesmann 04 Oct '21

04 Oct '21

Dear Humanoid League Teams, The newly elected Technical Committee of the Humanoid League had their first meeting two weeks ago and as part of this, we decided to keep the newsletters that we introduced last spring to keep you updated about the developments in the league and organization of the upcoming tournament(s). For now, we will send the newsletter on a monthly basis. Call for Participation and Submission Process for RoboCup HL 2022 ----------------------------------------------------------------- In the past years, we have sent out the first call for participation at the beginning of October. This year, however, we are still waiting for some details about the next RoboCup competition to be confirmed, which is why the first Call for Participation will be sent out a little later this year. But don’t worry, there will be a RoboCup Humanoid League 2022 competition in one way or the other for sure! At the moment, we are hoping to follow a similar timeline to the previous years, which would entail the initial submission deadline for teams in December and a notification of acceptance or a request for further material in January. The final submission of the updated material is planned for February. The Technical Committee does not foresee any changes in the submission procedure to the 2020 Calls for Participation, so please have a look at them for further information [0][1]. Future of the Virtual Humanoid Soccer Competition ------------------------------------------------- After the great success of the virtual soccer competition during the last world championship, we would like to use the opportunities the Webots simulator and the AWS infrastructure give us to keep the Humanoid League community connected throughout the year as well. At the moment, we are working towards setting up a virtual champions league with 10 games for every team played over a period of five months. Details and the exact start date are still depending on further logistical investigations, but at the moment we are considering a start at the beginning of December. The rule book will be similar to the one used in the last virtual tournament. However, we aim to have more variability in the virtual environment, e.g., by adding variation to the light source and ball texture. More information and a call of participation will be shared as soon as possible! We need you! Help for Virtual Humanoid Soccer Competition Needed ---------------------------------------------------------------- While we are committed to organize a virtual champions league and improve the virtual environment and AutoReferee system, we can’t do this alone. As the main responsibility of the Technical Committee is the organization of the next world championship, the application process as well as the rule and roadmap development, we need support with the virtual league. In particular, there are three projects that support is needed for: (i) AutoReferee and Simulator development: Apart from fixing remaining bugs and inconsistencies in the AutoReferee, this project also entails optimizing parts of the code and working on future extensions, like domain randomization. (ii) Competition Infrastructure: To run the virtual tournament, a large number of bash and python scripts were developed last spring. The aim of this project is to make the existing scripts more uniform and robust and simplify the setup and execution of the virtual tournament. (iii) Organization: Running a virtual champions league does not only require the technical infrastructure to be in place, there is also a number of tasks around scheduling, streaming, commentating, communication with teams, and making the results available. If you are interested to join any of the project teams, please get in touch with Jasper (e-mail: jasper(a)bit-bots.de or Discord: Bitbots_Jasper#5358). The first meetings will be scheduled in week 42/43, so please get in touch before October 11th if possible. You are, of course, welcome to join any of the groups later as well, but to get the virtual champions league started we will need helping hands as early as possible. TC Meeting Minutes ------------------ If you are interested to read more about the work of the Technical Committee and the decisions we are taking, you can always find the latest meeting minutes on the Humanoid League forum [2] Contributing to the Newsletter ------------------------------ If you would like us to include anything in the next newsletter, please let us know. The deadline for sending in topics is always the last day of the previous month. That means you need to send us topics latest by October 31st if you would like them to be included in the November newsletter. Cheers, Maike (for the Humanoid League Technical Committee) [0] https://humanoid.robocup.org/hl-2020/humanoid-soccer-competition/call-for-p… [1] https://humanoid.robocup.org/hl-2020/humanoid-research-demonstration-2/huma… [2] https://hl.forum.robocup.org/c/robocup/minutes/25 -- Dr. Maike Paetzel-Prüsmann Postdoctoral Researcher Foundations of Computational Linguistics Laboratory University of Potsdam, Germany Pronouns: she / her More information: https://www.maike-paetzel.de/

1 0

LAST CALL - RoboCup Brazil Open
by Comunicação RoboCup 13 Sep '21

13 Sep '21

Hi teams, Last days to sign up for RoboCup Brazil Open! Do not leave to the last minute! The event will be online, streamed live on our youtube channels. Already registered? Did you check if everyone on the team is registered correctly? If you have any questions, please send it to us by email at organizacao(a)cbrobotica.org ! *Registrations are open for RoboCup Brazil Open* *The event will be virtual, with the same categories of RoboCup Federation* RoboCup Brazil launches the RoboCup Brazil Open, a virtual event with the same categories of the Robocup WorldWide. Registrations are now open for teams from all over the world. All the categories have been adapted and will happen in a fully remote format, using simulators, challenges and submission of articles written by the teams. Our goal is to disseminate the studies and technologies developed by universities in the field of robotics and IA. The event will happen in October 11th-15th, and will be broadcast through lives on the RoboCup Brazil Youtube channel. *Categories:* RoboCup Open Flying Robot Trial League Small Size Soccer Humanoid League Standard Plataform League (SPL) Simulation 2D Simulation 3D RoboCup at@Home IEEE Humanoid Robot Racing (HRR) IEEE Open IEEE Standard Educational Kit (SEK) IEEE Very Small Size Soccer RoboCup Junior Soccer Open RoboCup Junior Rescue Maze Primary RoboCup Junior Rescue Maze RoboCup Junior Rescue Simulation Primary RoboCup Junior Rescue Simulation Open * Registration* To participate, you and your team must register by september 15th, on the website: www.cbrobotica.org . The registration fee is US$ 50 per team. *RoboCup Brasil is a non-profit civil association, organized by volunteer professors and researchers. The association holds the Brazilian Robotics Olympiad, the Brazilian Robotics Competition and the National Robotics Show.-- Patrícia VergaraComunicação RoboCup Brasil(11) 9.8686-4993www.robocup.org.br <http://www.robocup.org.br>*

1 0

vRoHOW 2021 - Save the date
by Patrick Göttsch 09 Sep '21

09 Sep '21

Dear fellow RoboCup teams, We are proud to announce the next virtual Robotic Hamburg Open Workshop (vRoHOW) 2021. The event will take place from 3rd to 5th of December. This year's vRoHOW will have the same goals as every year: Exchanging knowledge in workshops and discussions, expanding your horizon in talks, and chatting together with a cold beer or soft drink. Discord will be our venue with multiple rooms and areas prepared. Combined with additional tools and your participation we will bring the virtual RoHOW to life. Sounds good? There will be no participation fee! A detailed "Call for participation" will follow in the near future. As we currently are in a creative and early planning stage, we encourage you to send us ideas, feedback or any other vRoHOW related input. Inspired by the captivating and warm atmosphere of previous RoHOWs, we are looking forward to build this virtual event with you together. See you soon Team HULKs

1 0

CFP: RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2021 (RCAP 2021)
by Asad Norouzi 03 Sep '21

03 Sep '21

*Apologies for duplicate messages* ============== Call for Participation =============== *RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2021 (RCAP 2021)* 25-29 November 2021 https://2021.robocupap.org/eng/participation.html RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2021 Aichi Japan (RCAP 2021) will be held at Aichi Sky Expo (Aichi International Convention & Exhibition Center), November 25-29, 2021. RCAP 2021 will be held in a hybrid ON-SITE and VIRTUAL format. Due to the current uncertainties of Covid-19, ON-SITE competitions will only open to participants from Japan. - ON-SITE Competitions: Participants from Japan. - VIRTUAL Competitions: Participants from all over the world. *LEAGUES:* Virtual Competitions are open to participants from all over the world, with most of the leagues of RoboCup 2021 Worldwide. For details of leagues, please refer to: https://2021.robocupap.org/eng/leagues.html *REGISTRATION:* All teams are required to pre-register through the online form: https://2021.robocupap.org/eng/registration.html *IMPORTANT DATES:* - Deadline for pre-registration (both online and virtual competitions): 30 September 2021 - Announcement of qualified teams: 14 October 2021 - Deadline for registration: 4 November 2021 *REGISTRATION FEES:* The registration fee is waived for all Japanese teams/members. The registration fee for teams to participate in virtual competitions (except teams from Japan): - Major Team Registration Fee: Waived - Major Staff/Students: USD60/person - Junior Team Registration Fee: Waived - Junior Students/Mentors: USD40/person *SYMPOSIUM:* https://2021.robocupap.org/eng/symposium.html *CONTACT:* For inquiries please contact us via the hereunder email addresses: - Aichi Local Organizing Committee (General Enquiries, On-site competitions): - rcap2021(a)intergroup.co.jp - RCAP Office (Registration fees and payments, Virtual competitions): - office(a)robocupap.org For more information please visit our official website at https://2021 .robocupap.org/eng/index.html We look forward to welcoming you to RCAP 2021 Aichi Japan! Best Regards, RoboCup Asia-Pacific (RCAP) Office, RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2021 (RCAP 2021) Organizing Committee ____________________________________

1 0

RoboCup Brazil Open
by Comunicação RoboCup 23 Jul '21

23 Jul '21

Hi teams, *Registrations are open for RoboCup Brazil Open* *The event will be virtual, with the same categories of RoboCup Federation* RoboCup Brazil launches the RoboCup Brazil Open, a virtual event with the same categories of the Robocup WorldWide. Registrations are now open for teams from all over the world. All the categories have been adapted and will happen in a fully remote format, using simulators, challenges and submission of articles written by the teams. Our goal is to disseminate the studies and technologies developed by universities in the field of robotics and IA. The event will happen in October 11th-15th, and will be broadcast through lives on the RoboCup Brazil Youtube channel. In 2020, more than 700 students from Latin American attended the event. *Categories:* RoboCup Open Flying Robot Trial League Small Size Soccer Humanoid League Standard Plataform League (SPL) Simulation 2D Simulation 3D RoboCup at@Home IEEE Humanoid Robot Racing (HRR) IEEE Open IEEE Standard Educational Kit (SEK) IEEE Very Small Size Soccer RoboCup Junior Soccer Open RoboCup Junior Rescue Maze Primary RoboCup Junior Rescue Maze RoboCup Junior Rescue Simulation Primary RoboCup Junior Rescue Simulation Open * Registration* To participate, you and your team must register by August 30th, on the website: www.cbrobotica.org . The registration fee is US$ 50 per team. *RoboCup Brasil is a non-profit civil association, organized by volunteer professors and researchers. The association holds the Brazilian Robotics Olympiad, the Brazilian Robotics Competition and the National Robotics Show.* -- Patrícia Vergara Comunicação RoboCup Brasil +55 (11) 9.8686-4993 www.robocup.org.br

1 0

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

1 0

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)

1 0

(no subject)
by Benjamin Wild 21 Jun '21

21 Jun '21

1 0

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

21 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

1 0

V-HSC Newsletter 12 - including urgent rule update voting!
by Maike Paetzel-Pruesmann 20 Jun '21

20 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)

1 0

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)

1 0

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

1 0

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

1 0