Constitution

From RoboCup

Authors: Tomoichi Takahashi & H. Levent Akin
Prepared: 8/7/2007
Revised: 9/7/2007
Other contributors: Cameron Skinner, Sarvapali Ramchurn, Omid AmirGhiasvand
A pdf version of this constitution is available here.

Contents 1 Preface 2 Committee organization 3 Agent Competition 4 Infrastructure Competition 5 Competitions

Preface

RoboCup Rescue was organised as part of the Robocup competition for the first time in 2001 in Seattle. The league demo was presented in Melbourne in 2000. Since then, annual competitions have been held according to the goals of RoboCup Rescue and Simulation Project [1]. The Robocup Rescue League is divided into three sub-leagues, namely: Agent & Infrastructure, Virtual Robots, and Real Robots. This constitution concerns only the Agent and Infrastructure Subleague. History

In Padova 2003, the competition management manual was proposed and later competitions have been managed according to this manual [2]. In Lisbon 2004, the Infrastructure Competition was started to promote the software environment of Agent Competition. İn Bremen 2006 (demo at Osaka 2005), the Virtual Robots Competition opened a link to the Real Robot League. In Atlanta 2007, a new set of guidelines have been laid down for the Agent Competition and Infrastructure Competition to make them attractive to both researchers and users, and to operate competitions that will engage participants in order to generate more creative output.

Committee organization

1. In accordance with the rules of Robocup Federation there shall be two committees governing the competitions.: The organization committee (OC) and the Technical committee (TC).

Two members of Executive Committee of Robocup Federation are chosen  the from agent & infrastructure competition sub-league.
The Agent and Infrastructure competition is managed by three committees; (i) a technical committee generally responsible for the management of long term project development plans, (ii) an Organising committee responsible for the organization of the annual competitions, (iii) an Executive committee that is generally responsible for deciding long term project goals.

 In more detail, the roles and the responsibilities of the commitees are as follows

• Technical committee:
• Rule setting (from proposal, voting, decision, modification, to announcement.)
• Simulator Development
• Website/Wiki Development
• Organizing committee:
• Set up a review committee which will report to the Organising committee and TC
• the Review committee will be chaired by one person
• The Review committee will appoint reviewers for technical description papers and decide on the qualified entries for the competition.
• Scoring teams for qualification
• Management of RoboCup competition.
• Deciding the qualification of teams.
• Liaise with Local Organising Committee
• members of Executive Committee:
• Long term goals
• Liaise between Rescue Simulation League and Robocup Federation
• Planning road map of RSL to the coming 5 years with OC/TC members.

2. Committee Members:

• Number of members:
• There shall be three members of the Technical committee. The selection of the members shall try to have a fair representation of geographical regions. The Exec is a natural member of TC.
• There shall be two members of the organizing committee worldwide and one from the area where the next RoboCup will be held.
• Selections: The selections of committee members shall be made during the Robocup Competition.
• Each prospective technical  committee member shall do a presentation and explain why and how he/she has the qualities and experience to be part of the committee.
• The technical committee is elected from among teams that are present at the competition.
• Two (worldwide) organizing committee persons are elected by teams' voting on condition that they are not from the same region/country.
• The third organizing committee person is elected from among teams in the area where the next RoboCup will be held.
• The league chair is elected from among organizing committee persons.The  league chair will be the main contact person for the league and should lead discussions and make sure the targets set by the OC/TC/Execs are dealt with in a timely fashion.
• The exec, members of Federations are assigned by the Federation.

Agent Competition

• The package to be used for the competition will be released 5 months before the competition. Bugs can be corrected any time before the competition. Major changes (as decided by the TC/OC) will not be made during this period.
• A call for proposals for new features may be issued 2 months before the competition. These proposals should include a description of the new feature and sample code.
• Pre-registration of teams will be carried out 6 months before the competition.
• A maximum of 24 teams are allowed in the competition.
• Only pre-registered teams can vote on the rules of the competition.
• Proposed rules of competition shall be announced by the Technical committee no later than 5 months before the competition. There shall be a voting process where every team pre-registered in the league participates. The TC shall decide the final rules taking into consideration the votes and shall announce them no later than 4 months before the competition.
•  Qualification deadline will be set by the Robocup Federation. Qualification material will need to be submitted no less than 1 month before this deadline and the TC/OC will need to announce the qualified teams on or before the deadline.
• The emphasis in qualification shall be on contributions to research in relevant areas such as (but not limited to) Disaster Simulation and Rescue (drawing from experience in the real world), Artificial Intelligence, and Multi-agent systems.
• In each Robocup competition challenges shall be set to promote advancement of research and meeting the needs of real-world disaster rescue.
• The OC may use qualified reviewers who are not committee members.

Infrastructure Competition

• Pre-registration of teams will be carried out 6 months before the competition.
• A maximum of 24 teams are allowed in the competition.
• Only pre-registered teams can vote on the rules of the competition.
• Proposed themes for the next infrastructure competition shall be announced by the TC/OC at most 2 months after each competition.
• The emphasis in qualification shall be on contributions to research mainly in the area of Disaster Search and Rescue.
• The OC may use qualified reviewers who are not committee members.

Competitions

The page for all Agent and Infrastructure Competitions can be found on the Agent Simulation Competition page.

• The technical committee shall set the conditions of the Agent competitions in each Robocup competition.
• After games, the teams have a right to check other team's source code. The claims shall be done within 10 minutes after each session closed. The claims and checks should be done in front of all teams of the session. The OC shall have the final decision on the complaints after hearing both sides and examining evidence like code, logs, etc.

Open source policies:

• Both the simulators and competitor codes shall be open source.
• Using other teams’ code shall be based on the fair use policy. This policy shall be enforced by the OC.
• After competition, logfiles, gis_init files, *poly files and ALL source code (including teams') shall be open.