Happy New Year!

As we start the preparations for RoboCup 2024, we would like to inform the league of the main upcoming changes for this year's competition, based on the discussions from the last Open OC/TC meeting at the end of RoboCup Bordeaux.

We also want to give the league a quick heads-up that the Team Qualification Material Submission deadline for this year's RoboCup is February 13th. The CMT for submitting the (E)TDPs is now open and more information can be found at the qualification website https://ssl.robocup.org/robocup-2024-qualification/.

The (Updated) Qualification process

Starting with RoboCup 2024, the SSL will limit the number of teams participating in the competition. With the expected field setup, this limit is 12 teams in Division B and 8 in Division A. If more space becomes available, more slots in Division B will open up. To determine the selected teams, the TC/OC will rank all based on their qualification video, initial TDP submissionand feedback given during the review process. The TDP will generally be given preference over the qualification video & review feedback.

For Division A, the 8 slots available will be decided using the ranking system cited above. If not all slots of Div A are filled, the TC/OC will invite teams from Division B until all slots are used.

For Division B, there will be 8 slots that will be filled using the ranking system and 4 slots that will be filled randomly. This will ensure that new teams will have a chance of participating in the competition. All teams that did not get a slot in Division A are considered for Division B.

Qualified teams that are not invited according to this method end up on the waiting list, which again is sorted based on the ranking described above. The TC/OC will inform a team “You’re on the waiting list, your position is #2”. If a slot opens up, we will contact the teams in that order  to find a team that is still interested in coming to the RoboCup.

This is additional to the “qualified / conditionally qualified” system we are currently using. The requirements for (E)TDPs and Qualification Video will also not change.

Remember that teams regularly drop out (“withdrawn”) or don’t get qualified (“not qualified”), so there is a realistic chance a team on the waiting list can get invited. If you are directly qualified and not on the waiting list, please notify TC/OC immediatelyif you wish to withdraw so we can start communicating with teams on the waiting list.

Number of robots for Division A

In Bordeaux, the number of robots for division A was 11 and only two teams managed to actually play with 11 robots. With that in mind, and also wanting to provide more opportunities for teams in Division B to join Division A, we are making modifications to the allowed number of robots in Div A. During thegroup phase, games will be played with 8 robots on each side unless both teams agree to play with 11. And during the knockout phase, all games will be played with 11 robots per team.We still want to incentivize teams to play with 11 robots, but we do understand that this can be hard, especially for teams coming from Division B.

Rule changes

One major upcoming rule change is regarding the robot substitution process. Currently, a robot substitution is almost free, and a team can use almost unlimited time to do such a substitution.

In RoboCup Japan (2017) we started the automatic robot substitutions https://robocup-ssl.github.io/ssl-rules/sslrules.html#_robot_substitution, but in its current implementation, flagging a robot substitution has no consequences.This can lead to diverting the focus of the development from obtaining stable hardware, and can cause excessive downtime during gameplay. The rule change imposes some consequence to performing a robot substitution. We have not concluded our discussions, but are considering the following options (or a combination of these):

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A time limit on the robot substitution (either similar to the timeouts, or individually for each substitution event)

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Limiting the number of substitutions

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Consequences after a certain amount of substitutions

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Examples include losing a timeout, getting a yellow card, a free kick, etc.

Please stay attentive to our emails for any more announcements of rule changes.

Technical challenges

We have planned some exciting technical challenges for this year! The details are not ready yet, but we would like to give an overview so teams can start preparing for them.

Black & White Hulls

We have received a lot of feedback that for the audience, it is hard to distinguish between teams since most teams use black hulls. Therefore, we are proposing a challenge in which teams will have to show how they will quickly change their hulls’ colors between black and white.

Team vs. Team Passing Challenge

We want to extend last year’s passing challenge to involve other teams! This year, the passing challenge will involve two teams, each one trying to pass the ball to themselves. We are excited to see some ball stealing action and what strategies teams come up for this!

Please direct all inquiries to the Small Size League Organizing Committee: r*******c@lists.robocup.org mailto:r*******c@lists.robocup.org

Thank you!