RoboCup 2016 Virtual Robot Competition - Final Call for Participation

[Francesco Amigoni]

(Please apologize for multiple postings.)

**********************************************************************************************
Final Call for Participation
***Deadline for pre-registration: January 31, 2016***

          RoboCup 2016 Virtual Robot Competition

         June 30 - July 4, 2016 (Leipzig, GERMANY)
            http://www.robocup2016.org/

We would like to invite all robot rescue teams to participate in the 2016 RoboCup Rescue Simulation League World Championship.

The Virtual Robot Competition will be largely renewed (also as outcome of The Future of Robot Rescue Simulation Workshop to be held from February 29 to March 4, 2016, in Leiden, https://staff.fnwi.uva.nl/a.visser/activities/FutureOfRescue/) both in terms of simulation environment, with the transition from the current Unreal-based environment (which has been used in the previous years) to a ROS/Gazebo based environment, and in terms of challenges and rules.

If you are interested to participate please take the time to pre-register your team for the RoboCup 2016 Virtual Robot Competition as soon as possible, so that we can inform you about the latest developments.

1) RoboCup Rescue Simulation League and Virtual Robot Competition
---------------------
The RoboCup Rescue Simulation League is a socially relevant part of RoboCup event. Its main purpose is to provide emergency decision support by integration of disaster information, prediction, planning, and human interface.

A generic urban disaster simulation environment is constructed on network computers. Heterogeneous intelligent agents such as fire fighters, commanders, victims, volunteers, etc. conduct search and rescue activities in this virtual disaster world. Real-world interfaces such as helicopter images synchronize the virtuality and the reality by sensing data. Mission-critical human interfaces such as PDAs support disaster managers, disaster relief brigades, residents, and volunteers to decide their action to minimize the disaster damage.

Addressing this problem involves advanced and interdisciplinary research themes. As AI/robotics research, for example, behavior strategy (e.g., multi-agent planning, realtime/anytime planning, heterogeneity of agents, robust planning, mixed-initiative planning) is a challenging problem. For disaster researchers, RoboCup Rescue works as a standard basis in order to develop practical comprehensive simulators adding necessary disaster modules.

The next version of the Virtual Robot Competition is based on ROS/Gazebo, an advanced robot simulator in which users can simulate multiple agents whose capabilities closely mirror those of real robots. ROS/Gazebo currently features several ground and air robots, as well as a wide range of sensors and actuators. Moreover, exploiting ROS, users can easily develop their robot systems integrating standard modules. 
Note that the 2016 Virtual Robot Competition will be based on the new simulator and on the rules that will be available just after The Future of Robot Rescue Simulation Workshop.

See, for more information, http://www.robocuprescue.org/wiki/index.php?title=VRCompetitions
A document describing the architecture of the new simulator is available here:
http://robocup.oss-cn-beijing.aliyuncs.com/symposium%2FRoboCup_Symposium_2015_submission_14.pdf
while part of the code is available here:
https://github.com/m-shimizu/RoboCupRescuePackage

2) Pre-registration
-------------------
For the pre-registration please send before January 31, 2016 an email to francesco.amigoni at polimi.it with as attachment the following form filled in:
http://www.robocuprescue.org/wiki/images/IntentVirtual2016.txt

3) Qualification material
-------------------------
Besides the pre-registration, please prepare before March 30, 2016, a Team Description Paper describing the most innovative contributions or scientific results your team is intended to provide.
The TDP is limited to 8 pages and must be formatted according to the LNCS format: 
http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0

The Team Description Paper is an overview of the methodologies you used and intend to use to control your robots inside the Virtual Robot Competition. If applicable, include a reference to your latest publications.
Given the reduced time between the end of The Future of Robot Rescue Simulation Workshop and the deadline for qualification material, the qualification material should reflect the team ideas and intentions rather than being a technically detailed document.

The qualification material should be placed on a dedicated web page on the team's home page. 
Please include the link to the qualification material on the pre-registration information.

4) Deadlines
-----------
- Deadline for pre-registration Virtual Robot Competition: January 31, 2016
- Deadline for qualification material Virtual Robot Competition: March 30, 2016
- Team qualification notification: April 5, 2016

5) Rules
--------
The rules for the RoboCup 2016 Virtual Robot Competition will be published at:
   http://www.robocuprescue.org/wiki/index.php?title=VRCompetitions
The rules will be the output of The Future of Robot Rescue Simulation Workshop, but before the workshop an initial discussion of the rules can take place. The participating teams are encouraged to be engaged in the discussion, even when they are not present at the workshop.


We hope to see you all in Germany.

With kind regards,
Sanaz Taleghani, Masaru Shimizu, and Francesco Amigoni, 
2016 RoboCup Rescue Simulation Virtual Robot Competition Technical Committee


---------------------------------------------------------
Francesco Amigoni, Ph.D.
Associate Professor

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Laboratory
Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria
Politecnico di Milano
Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, 32
I-20133 Milano (MI), Italy

Voice: +39 02 2399-3475
Fax: +39 02 2399-3411
Email: francesco.amigoni at polimi.it
Web: http://www.deib.polimi.it/people/amigoni
---------------------------------------------------------