RoboCup2021 Soccer Simulation 2D League
June 22 – June 28, 2021 (online)
https://2021.robocup.org/
The call for participation document can be found at http://bit.ly/rc2021ssim2dcfp
Introduction
The RoboCup Soccer Simulation 2D League is one of the oldest of the 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 game of soccer with very realistic rules and gameplay. Due to its stability, the RoboCup Soccer Simulator is a very good research and educational tool for multiagent systems, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
We would like to invite you to participate in the RoboCup 2021 Soccer Simulation League 2D competition, which will take place June 22 – 28 2021, as a remote worldwide event. If you are interested in participating, please submit qualification materials first. Please see below in detail.
Important Dates
– May 2, 2021 – 23:59 UTC: Qualification Materials Submission Deadline
– May 22, 2021: Qualification Notification
Pre-registration
No Pre-registration is required this year.
Last Year’s Qualified Teams
The teams qualified for RoboCup2020 will be automatically qualified if they submit their TDP again. Of course, the TDP can be updated based on the progress in the past year. Their team name cannot be changed except replacing the string ‘2020’ with ‘2021’.
List of last year’s qualified teams:
– CYRUS
– FCP_GPR_2020
– FRA-UNIted
– HELIOS2020
– ITAndroids
– Jyo_sen2020
– Oxsy
– Ri-one
– RobôCIn
– YuShan2020
Qualification Materials
All teams have to submit qualification materials before May 2, 2021. If your team was qualified for RoboCup2020, your team’s material is only the team description paper. Other teams have to submit the following three materials:
– 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/km1p4Q37siTFjhEX9
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 last TDP/competition; team base code and a description of how the team is different from the base code; 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 5 and ideally more than 10 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, the 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 the base of another 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 RoboCup2019 (Fractals2019, HELIOS2019, CYRUS, or YuShan. The team binaries are available at http://archive.robocup.info/Soccer/Simulation/2D/binaries/RoboCup/2019/Elimination/). 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 have to be archived to one file (to be named ‘LogFiles_TeamName.tar.gz’) and submitted through the submission form. We recommend the archive file is stored online and put the link in the remarks column of 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 is aimed at introducing the league to those who are interested in participation but do not have 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:
– https://rcsoccersim.github.io/manual/ (New manual page)
– https://github.com/rcsoccersim/manual (Git repository)
– https://rcsoccersim.github.io/rcssserver-manual-20030211.pdf (Old manual)
Teams have to migrate at least one incomplete (sub)section from the old manual or have to write 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 Request 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 be surely 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 2D RoboCup Simulation League nominated by the organizing committee. The reviewers will evaluate the qualification materials. The team will be qualified if its averaged evaluation score reaches a passing score. The review results can also be used for other purposes during the competition. For example, if there are more than expected, 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 as well as 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:
If a team qualifies for RoboCup2021, but is not able to participate, it has to cancel its participation before the RoboCup2021’s final registration deadline for the TEAM (by a form or 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 RoboCup2022 competition.
Academic-Fairness-Rule:
If any team breaches general academic fairness in any other way, it has to face penalties as well.
Waiver of the team fee for NEW Teams
The RoboCup Federation is pleased to continue with a waiver of the team fee for the 2021 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 an annual international RoboCup competition. The waiver concerns only the team fee and does not imply any waiver of fees for team members.
Resources
– RoboCup Soccer Simulation League: https://ssim.robocup.org/
– General competition web page: https://2021.robocup.org/
– The RoboCup Soccer Simulator
– https://rcsoccersim.github.io/
– https://github.com/rcsoccersim
– Mailing list
– Simulation: https://mailman.cc.gatech.edu/mailman/listinfo/robocup-sim
– WorldWide: https://mailman.cc.gatech.edu/mailman/listinfo/robocup-worldwide
– RoboCup Competitions archive: https://archive.robocup.info/Soccer/Simulation/2D/
– Information for Authors of Springer Computer Science Proceedings: https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines
Contacts
If you have any questions and/or information, please send the message from the contact form: https://forms.gle/nKrxoP1qSpeRADje9
Best Regards,
RoboCup2021 Soccer Simulation 2D League Organizing Committee