Call for Participation: RoboCup2022 Soccer Simulation 2D League

25Dec 2021 by Tomoharu No Comments

July 11 – July 17, 2022
https://2022.robocup.org/

The original document of the call for participation is this google document

Introduction

The RoboCup Soccer Simulation 2D League is one of the oldest RoboCup Soccer competitions. It is based on the RoboCup Soccer Simulator that enables two teams of 11 simulated autonomous robots plus an autonomous coach agent to play a soccer game with very realistic rules and gameplay. The RoboCup Soccer Simulator is an outstanding research and educational tool for multiagent systems, artificial intelligence, and machine learning due to its stability.

We would like to invite you to participate in the RoboCup 2022 Soccer Simulation League 2D competition, which will take place July 11 – 17, 2022, in Bangkok, Thailand. If you are interested in participating, please submit qualification materials after pre-registration of your team. Please see below in detail.

Important Dates

  • Pre-registration Deadline: Feb 1, 2022 – 23:59 UTC
  • Qualification Materials Submission Deadline: Feb 15, 2022 – 23:59 UTC:
  • Qualification Notification: March 1, 2022

Summary (How to Participate?)

  • Pre-registration Deadline: Feb 1, 2022 – 23:59 UTC
    • Submit information via the online form.
  • Qualification Materials Submission Deadline: Feb 15, 2022 – 23:59 UTC
    • Submit TDP, Log files via the online form.
    • Submit a part of the documentation of the soccer server by Pull Request on GitHub.
  • Qualification Notification: March 1, 2022

Pre-registration

All teams wishing to qualify need to pre-register via the online form before February 1, 2022:
https://forms.gle/tKyVA2YXQGLZgt1T7

Qualification Materials

Pre-registered teams have to submit three qualification materials before February 15, 2022:

  • Team Description Paper
  • Log Files
  • Server Document

Teams have to submit their team description paper (TDP) (in English) and log files through the following form:
https://forms.gle/s3JmVW8JwuVV4pDx9

Please note that the submitted materials of all qualified teams will be made publicly available after the announcement of qualification results.

Team Description Paper

The TDP must have a length of 2 to 8 pages in Springer LNCS style and has to be submitted as PDF (to be named ‘TDP_TeamName.pdf’). Please note: A team can only be qualified if the quality of its TDP is appropriate! The quantity and the quality of your TDP are very important.

The TDP should comprise, among other things:

  • the scientific focus of the team
  • team’s current efforts
  • progress since the last TDP/competition
  • team base code and a description of how the team is different from the base code
  • the originality of the team’s approach
  • results (team results or ideally results achieved using the team’s main scientific contribution(s))
  • related work (at least five and ideally more than ten references comparing the work with related work developed by other teams)

Please be aware that the TDP has to describe the team’s very own scientific efforts and explicitly illustrate whether a team has used external knowledge (ideas, code, agent base, or the like) to build upon. If a team did use knowledge not evolved by this team, their own achievements have to be outlined in contrast to this. This also applies if one or more team members have switched from another team or a new team is created on another team’s base even though the involved persons have not changed. If external knowledge is used but not referenced, explained, and differentiated in the TDP, the team and its members will be penalized with banning for this and next year’s RoboCup.

Log Files

To assess the team’s performance and evaluate its scientific efforts in the context of gameplay, teams have to submit two log files against two different teams from the top four of RoboCup2021 (CYRUS, HELIOS2021, YuShan, or HfutEngine2021. The team binaries are available at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1l8aIlnTnFf2P5dnZhaZV_8wDSDKR0vJp). Log files comprise both rcg and rcl in version 5 (server::game_log_version = 5) on using the most recent version of the Soccer Server. These log files have to prove that the team is competitive enough to participate and demonstrate the team’s characteristics.

Your log files must be archived to one file (to be named ‘LogFiles_TeamName.tar.gz’) and submitted through the submission form.

Server Document

Teams have to submit a part of the documentation of the soccer server by Pull Request on GitHub. This action aims to introduce the league to those interested in participation but lacks a good information source. We need to update the server manual because the current documentation is still under migration and construction from the old manual:

Teams have to migrate at least one incomplete (sub)section from the old manual or have to write a new (sub)section(s) about new features not described in the old manual. Teams need to clone the git repository, then update something, and send Pull Requests with the team name(e.g. “[YOUR_TEAM_NAME] Update the section XXX”).

If the submitted document conflicts with other teams’ ones or is required to refine, the Pull Request may be refused. But, your Pull Request will surely be referred for the qualification. However, please be careful not to conflict the edits with other teams as much as possible.

It should be noted that the required documentation is on the official soccer server, not any soccer client libraries provided by teams (e.g., helios-base, wrighteagle, etc.).

Qualification Rules

Qualification is based on the quality of the TDP and the team’s current performance based on submitted log files. The TDPs will be peer-reviewed by experts in the 2D RoboCup Simulation League nominated by the organizing committee. The reviewers will evaluate the qualification materials. The team will be qualified if its average evaluation score reaches a passing score. The review results can also be used for other purposes during the competition. For example, suppose there are more than expected. In that case, those teams with low evaluation scores of the qualification materials will participate in the first round, and the other teams will proceed to the second round without the first round.

There are several general rules on which the qualification processes, as well as the tournaments, are based:

One-Team-Per-One-Person:

Each participant can belong to only ONE team. Do not submit qualification materials from several teams. If you submit qualification materials from several teams, OCs will assign you to a randomly selected team.

Plagiarism-Penalty:

If a team commits plagiarism, the team and its members will be banned from participation for this and next year’s RoboCup. The term plagiarism comprises any use of external knowledge without proper referencing, i.e. copying or using the thoughts, ideas, texts, or language in general and presenting them as their own. This applies to Team Description Papers and log files, team code, and binaries. All kinds of licenses and copyright have to be respected. This applies to the qualification process as well as the RoboCup tournaments. If suspicious behavior is found, Committee members may request to review the team’s source code. Please be aware that when a team is found guilty of committing plagiarism, it is disqualified and banned at any time. This may also be in the middle of the tournament.

No-Show-Penalty:

Suppose a team qualifies for RoboCup2022 but is not able to participate. In that case, it has to cancel its participation before the RoboCup2022’s final registration deadline for the TEAM (by an email to Organizing Committee Members) to give the next-ranked team the chance to take its place. If a team fails to observe this rule (‘no-show’), the team and its members will be banned from the RoboCup2023 competition.

Academic-Fairness-Rule:

If any team breaches general academic fairness in any other way, it has to face penalties as well.

Automatic-Qualification-Rules:

The top four teams from the last RoboCup (i.e., CYRUS, HELIOS2021, YuShan, or HfutEngine2021) are automatically qualified (after pre-registering their teams and submitting appropriate materials). The remaining teams will be selected through the qualification process.

Waiver of the team fee for NEW Teams

The RoboCup Federation is pleased to continue with a waiver of the team fee for the 2022 International RoboCup competition for NEW teams in the major leagues. A NEW team is defined as a team with a new name and all of whose team members have never participated in any annual international RoboCup competitions. The waiver concerns only the team fee and does not imply any waiver of fees for team members.

Resources

Contacts

If you have any questions and/or information, please send the message to nader.zare88@gmail.com or morteza.noohpisheh@gmail.com.

Best Regards,
RoboCup2022 Soccer Simulation 2D League Organizing Committee
Nader Zare, Morteza Noohpisheh

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