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)