Call for Participation

Call for Participation (Qualification)

RoboCup2020 Soccer Simulation 2D League
June 25 – June 28, 2020 (Bordeaux, France) https://2020.robocup.org/

The call for participation document can be found at http://bit.ly/rc2020ssim2dcfp

Introduction

The RoboCup Soccer Simulation 2D 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 game play. 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 2020 Soccer Simulation League, 2D competition, which will take place June 23 – 29 2020, in Bordeaux, France. All teams need to pre-register, then have to submit qualification materials. Please see below in detail.

Important Dates

  • Pre-registration Deadline: March 1, 2020 (Sunday) – 23:59 UTC
  • Qualification Materials Submission Deadline: March 15, 2020 (Sunday) – 23:59 UTC
  • Qualification Notification: March 30, 2020

Pre-registration

All teams wishing to qualify need to pre-register via the submission system before March 1, 2020:

https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=rcssim2d2020

The pre-registration requires only to fill the information of team members and the name of team. The “Author” field requires the name, affiliation and contact information of all team members. The “Title” field should be the name of your team. And, please write at least 3 words representing your research field in the “Keywords” field. The “Abstract” field will be used in the qualification process, please fill dummy words at this time.

Qualification Materials

Pre-registered teams have to submit three qualification materials before March 15, 2020:

  • Team Description Paper
  • Log Files
  • Server Document

Team Description Paper

Teams have to submit a team description paper (TDP) (in English) through the submission system:

https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=rcssim2d2020

The TDP must have a length of 4 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 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 description 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 from in the TDP, the team and its members will be penalized with banning for this and next year’s RoboCup.

Log Files

In order to assess the team’s performance and evaluate its scientific efforts in the context of game play, teams have to submit two logfiles (see below). Your logfiles have to be stored online and input only the link(s) in the “Abstract” field of submission system.

Logfile against one of the top teams of last year’s RoboCup: http://archive.robocup.info/Soccer/Simulation/2D/binaries/RoboCup/2019/Elimination/

Logfile against the latest agent2d: https://osdn.net/dl/rctools/agent2d-3.1.1.tar.gz

Logfiles comprise both rcg and rcl in version 5 (server::game_log_version = 5) on using the most recent version of the Soccer Server. These logfiles have to prove that the team is competitive enough to participate and demonstrate the team’s characteristics.

RoboCup Soccer Simulator Server Document

Teams have to submit a part of documentation of the soccer server by Pull Request in GitHub. This action is aimed at introducing the league to those who are interested in the 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:

Teams have to migrate at least one incomplete 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. 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.
It should be noted that the documentation is on the official soccer server, not any soccer client libraries provided by teams (e.g., agent2d, wrighteagle, etc.).

General Qualification Rules

In RoboCup 2020 up to 24 teams will be allowed to participate in the 2D competitions. Qualification is based on the quality of the TDP, and the team’s current performance based on provided logfiles.There are several general rules on which the qualification processes as well as the tournaments are based:

  1. 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 for Team Description Papers as well as logfiles, team code and binaries. All kinds of licenses and copyright have to be respected. This applies for the qualification process as well as the RoboCup tournaments. If suspicious behavior 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.
  2. No-Show-Penalty: If a team qualifies for RoboCup2020, but is not able to participate, it has to cancel its participation ONE MONTH before the RoboCup2020’s final registration deadline for the TEAM (by an email to Fabian Sommer <fabsels at web.de> and Hidehisa Akiyama <akym at fukuoka-u.ac.jp>, in order 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 for RoboCup2021 competition.
  3. Academic-Fairness-Rule: If any team breaches general academic fairness in any other way, it has to face penalties as well.

Qualification Results

Qualification results will be announced on March 30, 2020.
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 and rank the teams. The ranks will be averaged into a global ranking and the top teams on that ranking will be qualified for the RoboCup 2D simulation competition. Please note that the submitted materials of all qualified teams will be made publicly available during the announcement of qualification results.

Remote Participation

A small number of  teams will be allowed to participate in the competition remotely if they pay the team registration fee and two faculty registration fees. The team wishing remote participation have to apply to the “Abstract” field during the pre-registration. If many teams wish to participate remotely, the organizing committee will make a decision based on the qualification ranking.
Please note that the organizing committee does not have any obligation to fix any troubles of the remote teams: transferring the source codes from the team to the committee, debugging the team’s source codes, preparing the start scripts, and so on. It should be also noted that the remote teams will have some disadvantages compared to those teams who physically participate at the competition site. The disadvantages may include the binary update during the competition, log file availability, entrust to the executive committee in case of voting during the roadmap discussion, etc.
If the team is qualified as a remote participation team but the registration fee is not paid correctly, the team will be disqualified and marked as a ‘no-show’ team.

Waiver of the team fee for NEW Teams

The RoboCup Federation is pleased to continue with a waiver of the team fee for the 2020 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

Best Regards,
The Organizing Commitee of RoboCup2020 Soccer Simulation 2D League