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RoboCup 2024 - Open Source Award Submission TIGERs Mannheim
by Felix Weinmann 09 Jul '24

09 Jul '24

Dear SSL-Community, As in the past years we are very happy to announce our entry for the Open Source Award: The AudioRef! https://github.com/TIGERs-Mannheim/AudioRef The AudioRef aims to improve the understanding of the current game state for referees, participants and spectators in an intuitive and immediate way. To achieve this the AudioRef awaits state changes, card changes, command changes and new game events in game controller packets and uses configurable sound packs to trigger appropriate acoustic signals like whistle sounds or voice shouts. The currently available English and German sound packs have been designed with a specific focus on conciseness, using an intuitive whistle pattern and trying not to describe the obvious. You're welcome to contribute your own sound packs! The AudioRef has already been used at two local competitions and German Open 2024. You can hear it in action in this video from the German Open tournament (with the German sound pack): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgTJf4Soo_w and very likely at the upcoming RoboCup! In case you are missing any information or if you are just curious, contact us on Discord or write us an email. Tigertastic Greetings, TIGERs Mannheim

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RoboCup 2024 one week out
by Tobias Heineken 08 Jul '24

08 Jul '24

Dear Teams, Since the competition is one week from now, I want to send you another update Technical Challenges The deadline to sign up for the Technical Challenges this year is 15th of July, 20:00 o’clock CEST (Eindhoven local time). Starting now, you can sign up for these challenges under the following form: https://forms.gle/3Nb84m2BPPgqQVie8 Schedule You can find a preliminary schedule for the matches under https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wFbCYw-gfPdE7WykX31WSTPAvU3SWHysxap…. Please note that while we intend to use this schedule, we might have to do some minor adjustments. Keep an eye on the schedule! Also note that we currently plan on using Wednesday for the B/W hull challenge presentation, as well as the Open source presentations. Please plan accordingly. Open Source Award Like every year, we invite teams to participate for the open source award, to show off your open source solutions to other teams and compete for the award. As mentioned in the last email, we changed the format a bit for this year. Teams are now asked to dedicate one “project” for submission. This project will then be evaluated by your peers using the following ballot: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/11tH50He8FeAoGhy67LO89EXOcwJgudwKBHUX9lE4wI…. Do take a look at the ballot so you know in advance how to best prepare your project for final evaluation. To submit your project as a candidate for the open source award, send an email to the small size mailing list (robocup-small(a)lists.robocup.org). The deadline for this is also 15th of July, 20:00 o’clock CEST (Eindhoven local time), but we kindly request teams to submit early so that your fellow reviewing teams have more time to try out your submission and see if they can use it. Referee & Impartial roles Just a quick reminder that every team participating in the RoboCup 2024 needs to designate participants who will be referees / assistants / game controller operator / vision experts for games where they do not play. These members have to take the referee quiz (https://forms.gle/8VyNqHXWBQkdF2QL8). That’s all for today, see you in Eindhoven, Tobias

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RoboCup: We need your input!
by Nicolai Ommer 05 Jul '24

05 Jul '24

Dear teams, We need your input on some important topics. Please take the time to submit the forms by July 12th, 2024. Radio Frequencies Please tell us about the radio frequencies you intend to use at the competition: https://forms.gle/6kxqfT57GC5LymiR8 Based on your responses, we will create a radio frequency assignment, as in previous years. At this point, we’d also like to remind everyone to take part in the poll from Will from the A-Team, who is working on a SSL 5 GHz Wi-Fi Specification <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZWLjyoNuG8dFr9B2DSkJpK30gnuZRwcICuXRqCo…>: https://forms.gle/cHnQdZwhnsPer4DeA Inventorisation for Education Purposes in SSL The SSL committee is interested in knowing what the main purpose of the existence of the teams are. We would like to know whether teams use their team to educate people on the field of robotics and artificial intelligence, to specify themselves within these fields or use it as a hobby project. We therefore ask each team leader to fill in this form: https://forms.gle/wPt738yFEBjwyoJ67 Scientific Publications We like to collect all scientific publications of the SSL on the website <https://ssl.robocup.org/scientific-publications/>. This is important to share knowledge within the league. Please submit your publications with this form: https://forms.gle/R3zSRzxecyPwtoPD6 Looking forward to seeing you all in Eindhoven soon! Nicolai

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RoboCup 2024: What to bring and what not to bring
by Tobias Heineken 04 Jul '24

04 Jul '24

Dear Teams, Since there are less than two weeks until the RoboCup, we wanted to share our list of what to bring (and what to avoid) for the RoboCup with you. This list is most useful for newer teams, but I'll start with a few important items that are relevant to all. RoboCup 2024 Special Items First, you need to bring your own networking equipment. This year, this includes a very long (and reliable) Ethernet cable (RJ45) to connect your central machine to the vision network next to the fields (>15m divA, >10m divB). While this is usually provided by the venue, it looks like we need to bring it ourselves this year. Since we want to avoid an endless switching loop, a long cable is preferable to bringing shorter cables and a switch. Also, bringing a 2nd, backup cable is probably useful, either for yourself or to help a team in need :) As usual, the venue will include ONE RJ45 Ethernet cable at your team's table. Since you probably need more than one person connected to the internet while working on your robots, we strongly suggest bringing switches / routers with enough ports for all members in your team. It is unclear if there will be Wi-Fi with internet at the venue (see also below). Second, since some of our teams and adjacent leagues use the 2.4 GHz frequency range to control the robots, please avoid using wireless (bluetooth) keyboards, mice, or headphones, as they share the same frequency. Additionally, do not set up a "wild" Wi-Fi yourself. For RoboCup, wired solutions are superior, since they do not congest the already crowded frequency spectrum. If you choose to bring a Wi-Fi capable router as part of your networking equipment, please make sure you know how to disable Wi-Fi. General Items Third, you will need some equipment to adjust the color paper on top of the robots. To establish a well-calibrated ssl-vision setup, we will require all teams to use the same color paper on top of their robots. The paper is provided to you at the venue, but only you know how much equipment (if any) you need to change your color paper to the official one. Fourth, you will need a machine for your central team software. A powerful laptop is preferable here, since you sometimes have to move your setup from one field to another (either in Division B because your next match is going to be at the other field, or to move between the practice field and your match setup). Fifth, do not forget to bring power adapters / transformers and power strips. The Netherlands uses Type F, two pin grounded socket, with 230V 50Hz electricity; please plan accordingly. That's all for now, see you in Eindhoven, Tobias Heineken P.S: In accordance with the procedure outlined in our previous email, we have now concluded which teams play in which group. However, we have renamed the groups so that the larger group of 5 (without the Dummy team) is called Group A, and the smaller group is called Group B. This simplifies writing the schedule, and has no impact on the matches your team is expected to play. We will announce a schedule for the competition shortly.

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RC 2024 one month out
by David Brand 20 Jun '24

20 Jun '24

Hello, Since this year’s RoboCup is now about a month away, we want to give you some information regarding the SSL competition: General Information The time frame for the competition will be as follows: Team Setup Days: Monday 15. - Wednesday 17. July Competition: Thursday 18. - Sunday 21. July Symposium: Monday 22. July (From Monday to Saturday the venue will be open from 08:00 - 22:00 and on the last competition day it will be open from 08:00 - 19:00.) We currently don’t have a timeframe yet, from when the various fields will be finished, but we would expect that you should be able to get your first time on the field on the second setup day. The technical challenges will probably take place during the first two official competition days (18 & 19.). In addition to that, we want to give you a quick heads up. The organizers of this year's tournament are currently planning to run it as paperless as possible. The result sheets for each game will continue to be in paper, but probably everything else will be digitized and sent out via E-Mail and Discord. Therefore we highly encourage you to monitor either of the information sources during the competition. We will announce all important information at the competition area as well, but due to people being out to eat, etc. we cannot ensure that everybody will hear that announcement. Therefore, if you are not yet on the SSL mailing list, it would make sense to have at least one of the team members that are in Eindhoven on the small size mailing list: https://lists.robocup.org/mm/lists/robocup-small.lists.robocup.org/ Tournament Style Since we have 9 teams in each division we will run the group stage in both divisions with two groups each. That means that we will have one group of 4 teams and the other one will have 5. The knockout stage will be played in a double elimination stage. Due to the fact that we are going to have three Div B fields this year, the Division B will start the knock-out stage with 8 teams, whereas the Div A can only start with 6 teams. The teams will be drawn into groups using the SSL grouping tool (https://github.com/RoboCup-SSL/ssl-grouping). We already updated the seeding pools for this competition. Seeds are determined primarily by the results in last year’s competition (https://ssl.robocup.org/robocup-2023-results). If you notice any issues with this seeding, please notify us before the 24th of June. This is important since we will draw groups on that day and we have a much harder time adjusting the seeding when the resulting groups are already available. As we always do, we will use random.org for the random seeds required for the tool. We will draw the groups using the pre-generated random numbers for the 24th of June (which will become available at https://www.random.org/integers/?num=4&min=1&max=10000&col=5&base=10&format… on that date) to seed our tool: The first two numbers are for division A, the second two numbers for division B. Technical Challenges To help us plan this years technical challenge and have a first insight on how many team want to participate in each challenge, we prepared the following questionnaire: https://forms.gle/BCpdJbmHKra2A8q96 It takes less than 5 minutes of time and we would be happy if you could take the time and fill it out. The survey is not mandatory or obligatory, it is just used to get a first idea of the required timeframe. The official deadline to register for this year's technical challenges will be the 15. July at 20:00 o’clock CEST (Eindhoven local time). Referee Quiz To be allowed to fill in one of the impartial roles (assistant / main Referee, Game Controller Operator, Vision expert) during the official matches, you need to complete this year's referee quiz before the first competition day: https://forms.gle/8VyNqHXWBQkdF2QL8 Since all teams will need to take turns in filling in the impartial roles, if not at least two members of your team completed the quiz, your team could be excluded from the competition. Open Source Award Since every year most teams use a considerate amount of time to evaluate the submissions of the other teams, we decided to change the voting process this year. Since it was quite difficult in the recent years to come up with one numerical score for each category for each team, especially if the team had multiple projects, each team participating in the Open Source Award will need to pick one project for their submission. As a guidance for the rating, from this year on you can choose from different prepared sentences per category and pick the one that most closely represents the submission in that category. For example in the category Quality of Submission the options you can pick from, would be as follows: - We want to use the submission as an important part in our regular gameplay (3 Pts) - We want to use the submission as part of our testing routine or other regular SSL activity (2 Pts) - We want to use parts of the submission in our gameplay (2 Pts) - We want to study the submission or parts of it to learn about the solution and to improve our solution / approach (1 Pts) - We see no use of the submission (0 Pts) These statements are meant as guidance, i.e., you will be able to add or subtract points if you explain why you did so. For example, if we think of Documentation, you could add for RoboTeam Twente’s TDP Search Engine the following additional statement: “Documentation is less important if the team offers the service in an easy-to-use form on their website (+1Pts)”. Since we also want to help each team participating in the Open Source Award to improve their submission in the future, from this year on we will send out an anonymous summary for each team after the competition, that shows how your submission got rated in comparison to the other teams. In addition to the rating the section for each team's submission will also include a small text field, so that you can highlight the most important feature from the submission or give feedback on what the team could best improve. The feedback from this field will also be anonymized by the committee and then passed on to the team, so that they can use the feedback to improve their future Open Source contributions. The official submission deadline for this year's Open Source Award will be the 15. July at 20:00 o’clock CEST (Eindhoven local time). If you have any open questions, feel free to reach out to the OC/TC, See you in Eindhoven! David, in behalf of the SSL committee

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RC 2024 one month out
by David Brand 20 Jun '24

20 Jun '24

Hello, Since this year’s RoboCup is now about a month away, we want to give you some information regarding the SSL competition: General Information The time frame for the competition will be as follows: Team Setup Days: Monday 15. - Wednesday 17. July Competition: Thursday 18. - Sunday 21. July Symposium: Monday 22. July (From Monday to Saturday the venue will be open from 08:00 - 22:00 and on the last competition day it will be open from 08:00 - 19:00.) We currently don’t have a timeframe yet, from when the various fields will be finished, but we would expect that you should be able to get your first time on the field on the second setup day. The technical challenges will probably take place during the first two official competition days (18 & 19.). In addition to that, we want to give you a quick heads up. The organizers of this year's tournament are currently planning to run it as paperless as possible. The result sheets for each game will continue to be in paper, but probably everything else will be digitized and sent out via E-Mail and Discord. Therefore we highly encourage you to monitor either of the information sources during the competition. We will announce all important information at the competition area as well, but due to people being out to eat, etc. we cannot ensure that everybody will hear that announcement. Therefore, if you are not yet on the SSL mailing list, it would make sense to have at least one of the team members that are in Eindhoven on the small size mailing list: https://lists.robocup.org/mm/lists/robocup-small.lists.robocup.org/ Tournament Style Since we have 9 teams in each division we will run the group stage in both divisions with two groups each. That means that we will have one group of 4 teams and the other one will have 5. The knockout stage will be played in a double elimination stage. Due to the fact that we are going to have three Div B fields this year, the Division B will start the knock-out stage with 8 teams, whereas the Div A can only start with 6 teams. The teams will be drawn into groups using the SSL grouping tool (https://github.com/RoboCup-SSL/ssl-grouping). We already updated the seeding pools for this competition. Seeds are determined primarily by the results in last year’s competition (https://ssl.robocup.org/robocup-2023-results). If you notice any issues with this seeding, please notify us before the 24th of June. This is important since we will draw groups on that day and we have a much harder time adjusting the seeding when the resulting groups are already available. As we always do, we will use random.org for the random seeds required for the tool. We will draw the groups using the pre-generated random numbers for the 24th of June (which will become available at https://www.random.org/integers/?num=4&min=1&max=10000&col=5&base=10&format… on that date) to seed our tool: The first two numbers are for division A, the second two numbers for division B. Technical Challenges To help us plan this years technical challenge and have a first insight on how many team want to participate in each challenge, we prepared the following questionnaire: https://forms.gle/BCpdJbmHKra2A8q96 It takes less than 5 minutes of time and we would be happy if you could take the time and fill it out. The survey is not mandatory or obligatory, it is just used to get a first idea of the required timeframe. The official deadline to register for this year's technical challenges will be the 15. July at 20:00 o’clock CEST (Eindhoven local time). Referee Quiz To be allowed to fill in one of the impartial roles (assistant / main Referee, Game Controller Operator, Vision expert) during the official matches, you need to complete this year's referee quiz before the first competition day: https://forms.gle/8VyNqHXWBQkdF2QL8 Since all teams will need to take turns in filling in the impartial roles, if not at least two members of your team completed the quiz, your team could be excluded from the competition. Open Source Award Since every year most teams use a considerate amount of time to evaluate the submissions of the other teams, we decided to change the voting process this year. Since it was quite difficult in the recent years to come up with one numerical score for each category for each team, especially if the team had multiple projects, each team participating in the Open Source Award will need to pick one project for their submission. As a guidance for the rating, from this year on you can choose from different prepared sentences per category and pick the one that most closely represents the submission in that category. For example in the category Quality of Submission the options you can pick from, would be as follows: - We want to use the submission as an important part in our regular gameplay (3 Pts) - We want to use the submission as part of our testing routine or other regular SSL activity (2 Pts) - We want to use parts of the submission in our gameplay (2 Pts) - We want to study the submission or parts of it to learn about the solution and to improve our solution / approach (1 Pts) - We see no use of the submission (0 Pts) These statements are meant as guidance, i.e., you will be able to add or subtract points if you explain why you did so. For example, if we think of Documentation, you could add for RoboTeam Twente’s TDP Search Engine the following additional statement: “Documentation is less important if the team offers the service in an easy-to-use form on their website (+1Pts)”. Since we also want to help each team participating in the Open Source Award to improve their submission in the future, from this year on we will send out an anonymous summary for each team after the competition, that shows how your submission got rated in comparison to the other teams. In addition to the rating the section for each team's submission will also include a small text field, so that you can highlight the most important feature from the submission or give feedback on what the team could best improve. The feedback from this field will also be anonymized by the committee and then passed on to the team, so that they can use the feedback to improve their future Open Source contributions. The official submission deadline for this year's Open Source Award will be the 15. July at 20:00 o’clock CEST (Eindhoven local time). If you have any open questions, feel free to reach out to the OC/TC, See you in Eindhoven! David, in behalf of the SSL committee

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Qualification results are out!
by Carla Cosenza 15 Apr '24

15 Apr '24

Hello SSL! We are happy to announce that we have finished going over peer reviews and have submitted the qualification results. Each team should have received an email from an OC member with their results and we will soon publish them on our website. We also are very happy with the overall quality of the TDPs and ETDPs we have seen this year! Regarding which teams have been granted slots in this year's RoboCup, we are very happy to say that all qualified teams have been granted slots to the division they have requested. However this was only possible with the addition of an extra Div B field and altering the Division A tournament style. This is the first year that we have managed to get an extra field so please do be aware that we do expect to be going back to 2 Div B fields instead of 3 next year, and therefore we expect the number of teams at the competition to go back down to 20 in 2025. We also ask teams to email the OCs with an estimate of the team size that will be going to RoboCup 2024. We need an estimate to understand how to organize the space we will be occupying. Thank you! Carla Cosenza RoboCup Small Size League | Organizing Committee

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Rules for the RC 2024 Technical Challenges published
by David Brand 09 Mar '24

09 Mar '24

Dear League,After teasing this year's technical challenges in the last email, I wanted to let you all know that we've finally gotten around to finalizing and publishing the rules:https://ssl.robocup.org/robocup-2024-technical-challenges/We would like to encourage you all to participate in this year's challenges, as the 'Black and White Hulls Challenge' in particular may lead to changes in the coming years. In contrast, the 'Team vs. Team Passing Challenge' exists to incentivize teams to work on their ball conquering and pass interception skills in a more isolated environment. As these tasks are also common in regular SSL-matches, we assume investing time in this to be worthwhile.In addition, we would like to thank you all for your peer reviews. We are already in the process of reviewing all (E)TDPs, reviews and videos and will send out the preliminary qualification results before March 19.Please direct all inquiries about the qualification process to the Small Size Organizing Committee (rc-ssl-oc(a)lists.robocup.org) and all inquiries about the technical challenges to the Small Size Technical Committee (rc-ssl-tc(a)lists.robocup.org).Thank you!David Brand.RoboCup Small Size League | Technical Committee

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Peer review is now available!
by Carla Cosenza 18 Feb '24

18 Feb '24

Hello! Peer reviews are now open for submission in the conference tool! One member from each team should have received an email entitled "Peer review is now open". The submission of the reviews must be done through that account in the conference tool. Each team has been assigned 3 papers to review. We would like to remind everyone that the deadline for peer reviews is March 5th, 2023, anywhere on Earth and that the failure to submit this will result in disqualification from the competition. We would also like to point out that peer review is a very important part of the qualification process, so please do invest time on it and write thorough assessment. The review has one question that only the OCs / TCs will have access to, so please feel free to use that field to voice any concerns you do not want to share with teams. For any questions, please email the OCs. Best regards, Carla Cosenza RoboCup Small Size League | Organizing Committee

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2024 Qualification Video GreenTea
by 伊藤亮人 14 Feb '24

14 Feb '24

Dear RoboCup SSL community You can find our 2024 qualification video here: https://youtu.be/myittxXdK0s?t=16517 (from 4:35:17 to 4:40:17) Best regards, Akito Ito GreenTea

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