Dear SPL Teams,

The TC is in the process of determining the rules for the 2022 competition. We’d like to keep the league up-to-date on decision that have been made, which may help teams plan and prepare for 2022.

In-Person RoboCup 2022

At this stage, the TC is proceeding under the presumption that RC2022 will be held in-person, as scheduled in Thailand. If this changes, we’ll keep the league informed.

Structure of the Competition

RC2022 will return to a classic SPL competition structure, featuring:

* Main Competition * Champions Cup (12 teams) * Challenge Shield (12 teams) * 7 vs 7 competition: * A 7 vs 7 competition (7 players per side) will replace the mixed-team competition * Follows standard rules (with minor modifications for 7 players) * Some robots may be drawn from a pool of available robots to facilitate teams participating in the competition * Technical Challenges * The TC are considering a variety of technical challenges, and have narrowed down the possibilities to: * Visual Referee Challenge: robots will have to recognise some visual signal(s) from the referee. * Ball Handling Challenge: details to be confirmed, but triangle or give-and-go passing between robots in a game-like situation could be an example * Video Analysis / Game Statistics Challenge: detect game actions (e.g. ball touches, passes, time under control) from the sideline elevated go-pro type camera viewpoint

Separation of Championship Cup and Challenge Shield

The TC is also considering “separating” the Championship Cup and Challenge Shield for an individual year, so that teams would not move between the two leagues within the same competition. We have gathered responses from Challenge Shield teams and are considering whether to proceed on this change.

Rules Changes

At this time, the TC believe that many teams are still implementing the rules changes originally intended for the 2020/2021 competitions. Thus, the TC are not planning of significant rules changes for the main competition. The only significant rules changes are:

* Limitation to Event-based communication (limited messages per game instead of limited messages per second). * Continuation of standardising the game set-up and execution procedures from last year.

Regards, Timothy Wiley On behalf of the RoboCup Soccer SPL TC.