ROBOCUP 2020 VIRTUAL ROBOT – CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

Co-located with the
RoboCup 2020
https://2020.robocup.org

IMPORTANT DATES

Pre-Registration……………………………….: February 22, 2020 (23:55 GMT)
Team Description Paper (TDP) submission.: February 29, 2020 (23:55 GMT)
Qualified teams announcement…………..…: March 10, 2020
Camera-ready TDP submission………….….: May 31, 2020 (23:55 GMT)
Tournament dates………………………..……: June 25-28, 2020

Apologies if you have received multiple copies of this announcement. We would like to invite all robot rescue teams to participate in the 2020 RoboCup Rescue Simulation League World Championship.

If you are interested to participate please take the time to pre-register your team for the RoboCup 2020 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

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The RoboCup Rescue Simulation League is a socially relevant part of the 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 firefighters, commanders, victims, volunteers, etc. conduct search and rescue activities in this virtual disaster world. Agents can sense their environment and make decisions on the basis of the perceived data. Mission-critical human interfaces support disaster managers, disaster relief brigades, residents, and volunteers to decide their actions 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 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. 

Currently addressed research topics include but are not limited to 

• Human-robot interfaces
• Autonomous navigation
• Sensor fusion
• Image processing
• Speach processing
• 2D and 3D mapping
• Distributed planning
• Distributed learning

(2) Intention of participation

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If you are interested to participate in the competition, please send, before January 30, 2020, an email to  reyhanehpahlevan@ce.sharif.edu with as attachment the following form filled in:
http://ce.sharif.edu/~reyhanehpahlevan/Robocup/IntentVirtual.txt

(3) Qualification material

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Besides sending the intention of participation, please prepare before February 29, 2020, 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/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines

The Team Description Paper is an overview of the methodologies you use or intend to use to control your robots inside the Virtual Robot Competition. If applicable, include a reference to your latest publications.
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 intention of participation information.

(4) Deadlines

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Pre-Registration……………………………….: February 22, 2020 (23:55 GMT)
Team Description Paper (TDP) submission.: February 29, 2020 (23:55 GMT)
Qualified teams announcement…………..…: March 10, 2020
Camera-ready TDP submission………….….: May 31, 2020 (23:55 GMT)
Tournament dates………………………..……: June 25-28, 2020

(5) Useful links

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Official Virtual robot competition website:

 Robocup Rescue simulation Website

Previous Virtual rescue robot competitions materials:

1. https://github.com/RoboCup-RSVRL

2. https://github.com/m-shimizu/

3. https://github.com/reyhanehpahlevan/

4. https://github.com/amirezakabiri/

Here is the list of useful links:

1. Robotic Operating System(ROS)
2. Gazebo Simulator
3. Virtual Robot Competitions 2019 rules
4. Available team description papers
5. Virtual Robot former Robocup setup 
6. Available Open source code 
7. Robocup 2016-2019 maps and information could be found in  https://github.com/RoboCup-RSVRL
8. More documentation could be found in rescuesim website