2021 RoboCup Rescue Agent Competition – Call for Participation

Call for Participation
2021 RoboCup Rescue Agent Simulation Competition
    Online – June 22-28, 2021
https://rescuesim.robocup.org/2021-online-agent-cfp/

Co-located with the
RoboCup 2021
https://2021.robocup.org

IMPORTANT DATES

Pre-Registration……………………………: March 31, 2021 (23:55 UTC)
Team Description Paper (TDP) submission.: May 2, 2021 (23:55 UTC)
Qualified teams announcement……………: May 20, 2021
Camera-ready TDP submission……………: June 15, 2021
Tournament dates………………………….: June 22-28, 2021

MAJOR CHANGES TO THE SIMULATOR

  1. Scenarios without fires
  2. Changes to agents’ action commands
  3. Refuges with limited capacity

Please read the Agent Simulation Competition Rules document for further details.

ONLINE COMPETITION

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, RoboCup 2021 WorldCup will take place as a distributed remote event on June 22 – 28, 2021. The 2021 RoboCup Rescue Simulation will also be a fully remote competition.

AGENT SIMULATION COMPETITION

The RoboCup Rescue Agent Simulation Competition involves primarily evaluating the performance of teams of agents in regards to their distributed coordination and planning algorithms for rescuing civilians in a city after an earthquake. The agent teams are developed using the Agent Development Framework on different maps of the RoboCup Rescue Agent Simulator (RCRS). Specifically, it involves evaluating the effectiveness of Ambulance Team, Police Force, and Fire Brigade agents on rescuing civilians in earthquake scenarios.

There were some major changes to the simulator and role of agents for the 2021 RoboCup competition. Teams are advised to carefully read the Agent Simulation Competition Rules document available at http://rescuesim.robocup.org/2021-robocup/.

The participation in the Agent Simulation competition requires the submission of a detailed Team Description Paper (TDP) describing the strategies implemented on the agents’ code.

PRE-REGISTRATION

Teams must register via the submission system available at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rcrs2021 no later than March 31, 2021 (23:55 UTC). The pre-registration requires only teams to fill the the “Title” field and the name, institution, and contact information of all team members. The “Title” field should be “Agent_[TeamName]” to participate in the Agent Competition, where [TeamName] should be replaced by the name of the team. The pre-registration does not imply that the team will be evaluated to participate in the competition, please see section QUALIFICATION below for further information.

QUALIFICATION

Teams must submit a Team Description Paper (TDP) (in English) describing the strategy and recent advancements implemented in the team. The TDP is limited to 16 pages and must be electronically submitted as PDF through the submission system available at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rcrs2021 no later than May 2, 2021 (23:55 UTC).

The TDP file name has to be “Agent_[TeamName]” for the Agent Competition, where [TeamName] is the name of the team submitting the TDP. This format should be also used in the “Title” field in the submission system https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rcrs2021.

Teams should prepare their Agent Competition TDP based on the templates available at https://github.com/roborescue/rcrs-templates.

All TDPs will be peer-reviewed by at least two PC members. The evaluation criteria of contributions will be based on originality, quality, clarity, and its relevance to the league’s aims.

The suggestions of the reviewers should be incorporated into an improved version (i.e., Camera-Ready version) of the TDP. The camera-ready version should be uploaded to EasyChair no later than June 15, 2021.

QUALIFICATION RESULTS

Qualification results will be announced on May 15, 2021.

ABOUT ROBOCUP RESCUE AGENT SIMULATION LEAGUE

Natural disasters are major adverse events that cause large-scale economic, human, and environmental losses. They are usually difficult to predict and even more challenging to prevent from happening. These characteristics demand disaster management strategies to be in place to mitigate damaging consequences after a natural disaster.

The mission of the RoboCup Rescue Agent Simulation League is to promote research and development in the socially significant domain of natural disaster with focus on multiagent teamwork coordination and decision support systems. The effective implementation of this mission is translated into three main objectives. First, the league aims to provide a simulator able to realistically represent natural disaster scenarios where response rescue plans can be assessed. Second, it aims to define evaluation benchmarks for response plans elaborated by policy-makers. Finally, it aims to promote research and development by organizing competitions to stimulate the exchange of ideas and experience between researchers and practitioners. These aims are designed to help in the development of more sophisticated and formalized response plans to effectively respond to natural disasters and reduce the negative impacts on society.