Call for Participation RoboCup 2024 Soccer Simulation 2D Competition

16Jan 2024 by Hidehisa No Comments

RoboCup2024 Soccer Simulation 2D League Call for Participation

The detailed document can be found at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O02gc-9HZ3x95NnirHg45S3Z0uiZVIKwIKfXi1GnY00/edit?usp=sharing

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 2024 Soccer Simulation League 2D competition, which will take place July 15 – July 21, 2024, in Eindhoven, Netherlands. If you are interested in participating, please submit qualification materials after pre-registration of your team. Please see below in detail.

Important Dates*

  • Qualification Deadline: Feb 17th – 23:59 UTC Feb 29th – 23:59 UTC
  • Qualification Notification: Feb 29th – 23:59 UTC March 16th
    • Deadline may extend if the Federation’s official deadline surpasses expectations.

Summary (How to Participate?)

  • Qualification Submission Deadline: Feb 17th – 23:59 UTC
  • Qualification Notification: Feb 29th – 23:59 UTC

Pre-registration and Qualification Materials

All teams wishing to qualify need to pre-register. Pre-registered teams have to submit two qualification materials before Feb 17th, 2024:

  • Team Description Paper
  • Log Files

Teams have to submit their information, team description paper (TDP) (in English) and log files through the following form:

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 (plus any references -References do not count in page numbers) 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 RoboCup2023 (HELIOS2023, CYRUS, YuShan2023, Oxsy). The team binaries are available at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rZOno2V4uENqUSnQUnwSzrmFlmh2UUGE

comprise both Log files [rcg and rcl in version 5 (server::game_log_version = 5)] by 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.

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 teams 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 RoboCup2024 but is not able to participate. In that case, it has to cancel its participation before the RoboCup2024’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 RoboCup2025 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 (HELIOS2023, CYRUS, YuShan2023, Oxsy) 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 decision regarding the availability and implementation of this waiver solely rests with the RoboCup Federation, and any action related to the waiver should be awaited until an official announcement is made by the Federation. (It is yet to be determined whether this option will be available for new teams or not.)

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.

Starter Challenge (Sub-League)

This year the Soccer Simulation committee decided to run a challenge as a starter sub-league. This challenge is only for junior students. This sub-league was created to give an opportunity and a challenge to encourage junior students to participate in RoboCup soccer simulation and fill a gap in creating a new sub-league / league. Games in this Challenge will run in the full-state mode. The number and order of matches will be determined according to the number of participants.

Teams with all members (participants) up to the age of 19 years old are considered qualified for Starter Soccer Simulation 2D. Each team can have a mentor. Age is counted as of July 1st for the international event each year.

_ Starter challenge teams must register as a major team._

To be considered for the challenge, please tick the box in the pre-registration form.

** *SS2D will have another challenge like always.** The main challenge of the tournament will be determined during the RoboCup time.

Additional Notices

Any changes and notices or requests for additional information will be sent to the given team email.

Resources

Contacts

If you have any questions and/or information, please send the message to omidamini360+rc2024@gmail.com (or omidamini360@gmail.com) or nader@cyrus2d.com.

RoboCup2024 Soccer Simulation 2D League Organizing Committee

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