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RoboCup SPL Newsletter No. 3 2025 - New Challenge and rules updates
by Caron, Benjamin 01 Mar '25

01 Mar '25

Dear SPL Teams, New Challenge - Pass-Masters-Bridging-the-Leagues We are excited to introduce a new challenge this year in collaboration with the Humanoid League! The goal of Pass-Masters is to enable ball passing between a NAO and a Humanoid robot, marking a first step toward inter-league collaboration. For full details, refer to the challenge presentation here<https://spl.robocup.org/wp-content/uploads/Pass-Masters-Bridging-the-League…>. Challenge Update - KICKin-Rollin We have made minor clarifications that do not change the core concept of the challenge. However, we strongly encourage teams to review the updated version, particularly the section on challenge procedures. Ramp Proposal – Deadline Extension The deadline to submit a ramp design is being extended until after the German Open to allow for discussion and potential testing there. There is currently only one proposed ramp design. Meanwhile, any teams who have already tried out that ramp are encouraged to submit any relevant feedback on the following form: https://forms.gle/i4svZeQh4tWD9JnH9 Rulebook - Drop Ball Rule We have made small adjustments to better align with the rule’s intent. The rules now acknowledge that a drop ball does not always require the robots to restart from the sideline, and there are situations, such as Global Game Stuck, where they will resume play from their current positions using a standard Set as they did last year. Best regards, RoboCup SPL TC

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Naova code usage for German Open 2025
by Club Naova 07 Feb '25

07 Feb '25

Dear SPL Teams, In accordance with the terms and conditions of the B-Human code release's license, Naova announces the use of the following B-Human modules for the German Open 2025. - Ball perceptor from 2021 - Referee gesture detection from 2024 We would like to thank the B-Human Team for sharing their code and acknowledge their contribution to the RoboCup SPL. [signature_914140835]Olivier St-Pierre | Étudiant en génie logiciel Capitaine du club scientifique Naova École de technologie supérieure | 1100, rue Notre-Dame Ouest Montréal (Qc) Canada | H3C1K3 Tél. : 438-226-6639| Instagram<https://www.instagram.com/clubnaova/> | Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/naorobotique/> | Site Web<https://www.clubnaova.ca/>

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RoboCup German Open 2025 - Call for participation - Major Leagues
by Heinrich Mellmann 21 Jan '25

21 Jan '25

RoboCup German Open 2025 Call for Participation - Major Leagues https://robocup.de/german-open NürnbergMesse, Frankenhalle, Germany The 22nd RoboCup German Open 2025 will take place from March 12-16 in Nuremberg. Nuremberg, the second largest city in Bavaria, combines medieval charm with modern vitality. The city is known for its iconic castle, half-timbered houses and old city walls and has great historical significance. The city flourishes as a cultural and innovative centre where history and modern life coexist in a wonderful way. Every regional and international Major team is cordially invited to take part in the event. ----------------- RoboCup Major Leagues (international teams) ----------------- After the team setup on March 12th, the competitions will take place from 13 to 16 March 2025 in the following main leagues: • RoboCupSoccer Standard Platform League • RoboCupSoccer Humanoid League (KidSize and AdultSize) • RoboCupSoccer Small Size League • RoboCupRescue Robot League • RoboCupIndustrial Logistics League • RoboCupIndustrial @Work League • RoboCup@Home Open Platform League Registration opens *** December 15, 2024 *** Registration deadline *** January 31st, 2025 *** Late registration deadline (team members only) *** February 28th, 2025 *** When registration opens, visit https://register.robocup.de to register your RoboCup Major League team. Details on the registration (fee, rules, travel) are available on the website. Teams are advised to make their own accommodation arrangements as early as possible, as places are limited before March 13. ----------------------- RoboCup Junior (German teams) ------------------------- From March 13-16, 2025 the final event of the German RoboCupJunior Championship will be held at RoboCup German Open 2025 in Nuremberg. The best teams that have qualified in the eight previous German qualifying tournaments will take part. The best German Junior teams in the 2025 German Junior Final will qualify for RoboCup 2025 in Brazil and for the European RoboCupJunior Competition 2025 in Italy. --------------------------- Organization Committee ---------------------------- • Oskar von Stryk (General Chair) • Stefan May (Local Chair) • Alexander Ferrein (German RoboCup Committee, Spokesperson Major) The Major Leagues Organizing Committee: • Heinrich Mellmann (Standard Platform League) • Maike Paetzel-Prüsmann (Humanoid League) • Nicolai Ommer (Small Size League) • Johannes Pellenz, Stefan May, Thomas Sander (Rescue Robot League & RMRC) • Sven Wachsmuth (@Home League) • Alexander Ferrein (Logistics League) • Christoph Steup (@Work League) ------------------------------ Co-located Events ------------------------------ Parallel to the RoboCup German Open 2025 the first German Robotics Conference organized by the newly established Robotics Institute Germany (RIG) will take place. The conference will bring together the leading German researchers in AI-based robotics. Also in parallel, the Freizeit Messe will take place, which is one of Germany's largest leisure and lifestyle fairs. It attracts about 70.000 visitors each year. Many participants from both events are expected to visit RoboCup German Open 2025. ------------------------------- Important Dates ------------------------------- • 2024-12-15 Major teams early registration starts • 2025-01-31 Major teams registration deadline, team member registration deadline • 2025-02-28 Late registration deadline (team members only) • 2025-03-12 Set-up day Major League teams • 2025-03-13 to 16 Competition days • 2025-03-16 Major and Junior finals The event is open to the public during all days from 9 am to 5 pm ----------------------------------- Contact ---------------------------------- Please contact germanopen(a)robocup.de for any questions. See you all at the 22nd RoboCup German Open 2025! Best regards, German RoboCup Committee -------------------------------- Acknowledgment ------------------------------- The RoboCup German Open 2025 are supported by the German Federal Ministry for Research and Education (BMBF) within the Robotics Institute Germany under grant number 16ME1001.

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RoboCup SPL Call for Participation 2025 - Deadline Reminder
by Tom Ellis 16 Jan '25

16 Jan '25

Call for Participation Reminder RoboCup 2025 Standard Platform League Hi RoboCuppers, Just a quick reminder that all applications for the 2025 RoboCup SPL Competition, with the relevant qualification material, must be submitted by 17th of February 2025, just over 1 month from now! Full Application Details can be found at spl.robocup.org/call-for-participation-2025<https://spl.robocup.org/call-for-participation-2025/> Tom Ellis, on behalf of the RoboCup 2025 Standard Platform League Technical and Organizing Committees

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Survey on RoboCup Standard Platform League Research Contributions
by Josiah Hanna 16 Jan '25

16 Jan '25

Dear SPL Teams, We, the RoboCup SPL Executive Committee, would like to understand how SPL teams have contributed to the broader robotics, AI, and RoboCup community. We request that a member from each SPL team please complete the following survey: https://forms.gle/EuYcEbZCx8ivxpL6A The survey asks each team to report on different types of contributions to robotics research, education, and RoboCup. It also asks for your input on recognizing and incentivizing activities beyond winning the annual competition. We would appreciate your response by Monday, January 6. Thank you for taking the time. Thanks, Josiah Hanna (on behalf of the SPL Exec committee)

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RoboCup SPL Call for Participation 2025
by Tom Ellis 18 Dec '24

18 Dec '24

Call for Applications for Participation RoboCup 2025 Standard Platform League spl.robocup.org<https://spl.robocup.org/> Tuesday 15th July through Monday 21th July 2025 Salvador, Brazil 2025.robocup.org<https://2025.robocup.org/> RoboCup<https://www.robocup.org/> is an international initiative that fosters research and education in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence through a variety of competitions (RoboCupSoccer, RoboCupRescue, RoboCup@Home, RoboCupIndustrial, RoboCupJunior) involving mostly multi-robot systems. RoboCupSoccer currently includes a number of different robot soccer leagues that focus on different research challenges. The Standard Platform League (SPL) is characterized by all the teams using an identical robot platform. Participating researchers focus on algorithmic development for fully autonomous robots in the main competition while developing individual skills measured in various technical challenges. The SPL robot soccer team competition games at RoboCup 2025 will be played between teams of fully autonomous NAO robots. Participating teams may use V6, V5 or older versions of the NAO humanoid robot manufactured by Aldebaran<https://www.aldebaran.com/en/nao>. Teams should be able to play on a randomly assigned field within one hour. The RoboCup 2025 SPL will host a soccer team competition, several technical challenges and introduce longterm leaderboards, detailed below. The soccer team competition will consist of a number of games that is similar to recent years for most teams. The draft rule book for 2025 is available on on the downloads page<https://spl.robocup.org/downloads/#2025>. The league operates two divisions: Champions Cup (CC) and Challenge Shield (CS). Teams in the Champions Cup division will compete in matches with up to 7 robots per team. Teams in the Challenge Shield division will compete in matches with up to 5 robots per team. All teams are encouraged to compete in one or more challenges in addition to the main soccer competition. There will be several challenges in 2025 in addition to the main soccer team competition: · The ’KICKin & Rollin’ Challenge, a standard out-of-game technical challenge designed to encourage teams to develop the best way to kick a rolling ball. · An open research challenge will be held to showcase innovations that contribute to the growth, development, and improvement of the league, beyond the core competition objectives. · There is a planned cross-league challenge to be conducted with the cooperation of the humanoid-league, similar to the 2021 passing challenge, additional details to follow as they are finalised. · Starting in 2025, several long-term leaderboards will be introduced to track and compare team performances across key skills over multiple years. These leaderboards aim to motivate teams to improve in specific areas deemed valuable by the league and to compile a record of the top-performing components and skills. More details regarding the challenges are given in the rule book<https://spl.robocup.org/downloads/#2025> Joining the League The league is always ready to welcome new teams. If you are considering joining: the league has prepared information for you<https://spl.robocup.org/joining-robocup-spl/> to support you in your first steps. We encourage you to contact the organizing committees and other teams if you have questions. To assist in adoption of NAO V6 robots, source code examples and documentation regarding V6 robots were published on the SPL website<https://spl.robocup.org/v6-support/>. One can also find example code for V6 robots in the code released by participating teams. If you need access to the RoboCup NAOqi Image and the specific documentation, please write an email (mentioning your team affiliation and plans) to rc-spl-tc(a)lists.robocup.org<mailto:rc-spl-tc@lists.robocup.org>. Qualification All interested teams that are not pre-qualified must apply by sending an email to the Technical Committee (see below). A valid application must contain: 1. Team Description Paper: See below. The TDP must be attached as PDF file to the email. 2. Preference to compete in the Champions Cup or Challenge Shield: State whether you prefer to compete in CC or CS. If you prefer to compete in CS, please state if you would accept an assignment to CC to balance the competition. 3. Video presentation: Include a link to a video (maximum 5 minutes long, uploaded on the team’s web site or on some video server) that demonstrates the status of the team. The organizing committees use the video to determine the readiness of the team to compete effectively, and hence should focus on the team’s ability to play soccer. Teams who did not participate in the team competition at RoboCup 2024 must include footage of at least one robot attempting to kick off and score (this footage must be captured as a single wide shot with no cuts). If robots from multiple teams are active in the footage (e.g., game footage), please include a textual overlay or additional document denoting which robots belong to the applying team for every scene. Videos of simulation contributions will also be accepted, but only when a real robot is unavailable. Preference will be given to teams that use real robots to show soccer skills in their video. 4. Robot purchase plans: State how many NAO robots your team plans to buy this year. Pre-Qualification Teams that finished in the top 3 of either the Champions Cup or Challenge Shield divisions or finished in the top 5 of the technical challenge at RoboCup 2024 are pre-qualified for RoboCup 2025, if they submit a valid application as detailed below. The following teams can make use of pre-qualification: · Bembelbots · B-Human · HTWK Robots · Nao Devils · RedbackBots · RoboEireann · R-ZWEI KICKERS · SPQR Team · WisTex United A valid application for pre-qualified teams must contain all of the content mentioned above, without the need to provide a video presentation. If a joint 2024 team splits, only one team can be pre-qualified for 2025 (please indicate which one). Team Description Paper Both regular and pre-qualified teams must submit a team description paper (TDP) attached as PDF file to their application email. For the TDP to be considered, it must: · be named according to the pattern SPL_2025_TDP_<TeamName>.pdf · be formatted according to the Springer LNCS author guidelines <https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gu…> . · be no longer than 8 pages (including references). · be structured in the following sections with the specified headings: 1. Team Information: · team name (the one true spelling, considering capitalization, spaces, hyphens, etc.) · team leader(s) · team contact email address · team website URL (if available) · country of origin · university/company affiliation(s) of the team 2. Code Usage: Acknowledge the team’s use of any other team’s code (1) previously from 2020 to present and (2) anticipated at RoboCup 2025. If code is used from other teams, is this code integrated into a code base that is mainly designed by the applying team? If the applying team does not use any other team’s code, state so. For further details, please have a look into the rule book, section A.1<https://spl.robocup.org/downloads/#2025>. 3. Own Contribution: Describe in detail the ‘research publishable’ significant advancements the applying team has made and is going to use at RoboCup 2025, in accordance with the rule book, section A.1<https://spl.robocup.org/downloads/#2025>. 4. Unpublished Results: Provide game results in RoboCup Regional Open competitions as well as main RoboCup competitions from 2020 onward that are not already published on the SPL website<https://spl.robocup.org/>. Include opponents and game scores from each competition in a table. State if the team plans to participate in any RoboCup Open competitions or friendlies prior to RoboCup 2025. 5. Impact: What is the impact of the team’s participation and research in RoboCup on (1) the SPL, (2) the team’s university/community? 6. Other: Present any other information that you believe supports your application. Please note that the TDP is not a peer-reviewed publication and will not appear in any collection apart from the RoboCup TDP archive<https://tdp.robocup.org/>. Qualification for Regional Opens Only Teams may also submit a short intent to participate in a regional open if they do not wish to participate in the 2025 RoboCup competition. Although teams may participate in regional opens without submitting this intent to participate, teams who submit an intent to participate and become qualified may be eligible for future special robot pricing. Special robot pricing for teams competing in RoboCup Events are still being discussed. Updates about special prices will be announced as soon as offers and conditions are finalized. Teams must submit the following information by 17th of February 2025: (1) The team name, leader(s), and the university/company affiliation(s) of the team and (2) a short statement describing the status/progress of the team. A link to a short video showing robot soccer behaviours and/or game play (using robots or in simulation) may be included if available. Submission and Evaluation All applications with the (pre-)qualification material must be submitted by 17th of February 2025, by email to rc-spl-tc(a)lists.robocup.org<mailto:rc-spl-tc@lists.robocup.org>. Please use a subject matching the pattern RoboCup 2025 Application <team name>. Applications must not be sent to personal SPL TC/OC email addresses and must not contain video attachments. By submitting your application, you grant the SPL committees the rights to publish the TDP and application video / code release link. Note that applying serves as a statement of commitment to participate in the RoboCup 2025 SPL. If you have doubts regarding the ability of your team to participate (due to funding, visas, etc.), please apply by the deadline but note this in your application email. Declining to participate in any competition after the official early registration period has opened may negatively affect future applications (the later you decline, the worse it will affect future applications). Teams are encouraged to consider joint participation. Joint proposals will be judged on combined merit. Applications will be evaluated by criteria which include: 1. Potential to play competitive games at RoboCup 2025 (demonstrated ability to play soccer, previous results, etc.) 2. Contributions (and potential contributions) to league (code releases/papers, active in organization, developing own code, etc.) 3. Diversity (region, team make-up, unique characteristics, etc.) Since 2023 the competition rules require all teams to release the source code for novel contributions. This ensures that all teams can learn from good solutions and all teams are driven to make improvements each year. More details regarding code releases are given in the rule book<https://spl.robocup.org/downloads/#2025>. All teams can expect to be required to publish a contribution. As part of the application phase teams will be assigned into the CC and CS divisions. Assignments will be judged based on previous performance and application material. The organizing committees will do their best to honor teams’ preferences. However, the necessity might arise to assign teams into divisions against their preference. All teams applying for CC are expected to be able to compete in CS. Teams will be notified during the application phase if they are assigned into a division against their preference Qualification decisions, including alternate lists, will be announced by 3rd of March 2025. Robot Acquisition Teams who submit an intent to participate and become qualified will be eligible for potential future special robot pricing. Special robot pricing for team competing in RoboCup Events are still being discussed. Updates about special prices will be announced if offers and conditions are finalized. Tom Ellis, On behalf of the RoboCup 2025 Standard Platform League Technical and Organizing Committees

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RoboCup Global Discord Server
by Francesco Petri 10 Dec '24

10 Dec '24

Dear SPL Teams, we now have an official server for RoboCup as a whole. While we plan to keep discussion related to the SPL on the usual channels (including the existing mailing lists), you can use this new one to connect with the greater community, share ideas, and hear general announcements regarding RoboCup in general. It is a broader avenue of communication available to you, and it will not replace the current SPL Discord server. Join the official RoboCup Community server here: https://discord.gg/dcFgqFTeCy If you do, make sure you click on "Channels & Roles" and set the SPL role for yourselves in order to access the SPL text channel. Best, Francesco

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HTWK Robots Code Release 2024
by Nao-Team HTWK 16 Oct '24

16 Oct '24

Dear SPL Teams, at RoboCup 2024 we heard of interest of our current walking engine. Thus, we are publishing the current state of our walking engine as used at RoboCup 2024 at https://github.com/NaoHTWK/HTWKMotion.git . In addition, you can find the release of our Shared Autonomy code at https://github.com/NaoHTWK/2024_SharedAutonomyChallange.git . Best regards, Team HTWK Robots.

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R-ZWEI Kickers Code Release 2024
by Wilhelm Simus 16 Oct '24

16 Oct '24

Good evening, the R-ZWEI Kickers would like to release their code used in competition and challenges (and cleaned up a bit afterwards) in 2024. You can find our release here: https://github.com/AK-Smart-Machines-HS-KL/R-ZWEI-Kickers-Code-Releases Should you wish to follow more recent developments, we're also full open source in this repository: https://github.com/AK-Smart-Machines-HS-KL/R2K-SPL Kind regards, Wilhelm Simus (Cpt. of R-ZWEI Kickers)

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NomadZ 2024 Code Release
by Li Zichong 16 Oct '24

16 Oct '24

Dear SPL Teams, we hereby announce the availability of our 2024 code release: https://github.com/nomadz-ethz/nomadz-code-release Best regards, Zichong

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