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March 10, 2022

Hello Teams:

We have released drafts of the first sections of the rulebook for 2022! Many things have changed as we seek to maintain flexibility so that as many teams as possible may participate.

The first sections of the rulebook cover Qualification and Competition Logistics, Maneuvering, Mobility, and Dexterity and can be downloaded from the new 2022 Rules page. Please send comments to rescue.robot.league@nist.gov by the 21st of March.

We will be releasing additional sections covering Search and Inspect, Exploration and Mapping, Outdoor Carrybot, Aerials, and Construction Guide shortly.

March 2

February 28, 2022

Hello Teams:

First round of qualified teams will be announced on March 23.  Please keeping checking this page and forum for updates. As to date,  we do not have any additional information regarding logistics (registration, hotel, etc.) for the event. Please check https://2022.robocup.org/for updates.

February 8, 2022

Hello Teams:

January 24, 2022

January 18, 2022

Hello Teams:

February 25 – TDP’s are due. We will use EasyChair for your submissions of the Team Description Papers (TPDs). Please follow this link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rrl2022

• Format for title: RRL2022_TeamName_Country
• Person registering in EasyChair will be our main contact.
• Updated 2022 Template

Note: The executive committee is still discussing video qualification submissions. Please be aware this may be a requirement for RoboCup Rescue.

January 17, 2022

Hello RoboCuppers:

We would like to invite you to complete the participation surveyfor RoboCup 2022, Bangkok, Thailand. This survey aims to explore the possible challenges and requirements of participants in the event, which will be held in 11-17 July 2022 at Bangkok, Thailand. If you unable to reach the google survey, please download/complete excel sheet and email the form to April Foster by January 29, 2022.

According to the covid-19 pandemic situation, Thailand is gearing up for a return to normalcy by easing some travel restrictions and quarantine requirements and allowing normal tourists to enter the country. In addition, the government has now introduced sandbox programs allowing fully vaccinated travelers from 63 low-risk countries to enter the country without quarantine. For more specific information on situation and arrival requirements, please kindly visit our website on https://2022.robocup.org/.

In addition to the participation survey, our league also requires a Team Participation Form (TPF) to be completed.

We appreciate the time you have taken to complete the participation survey and the Team Participation Form for RoboCup 2022, Bangkok, Thailand. We are hoping and looking forward to seeing you at the event.

The deadline for BOTH forms is January 31, 2022.

RoboCup 2022 Organizing Committee

January 5

February 1, 2021

Hello All!

As you’ve probably seen if you’re subscribed to RoboCup Worldwide, Peter Stone has announced that RoboCup 2021 will be completely virtual. The RoboCupRescue Robot League has been planning for this eventuality and we would like to present our plan to conduct RoboCupRescue in a completely remote fashion.

We will have more details about the specifics shortly, including the launch of a new online forum where we can discuss the further development of rules and procedures that will be necessary, so stay tuned!

Here’s a high level summary of how we will run this year.

This year we have a unique opportunity to modify how we conduct our league to involve even more researchers, add statistical significance to our evaluations, and advertise more widely the state-of-the-science that RoboCupRescue is contributing.

Although, this years coronavirus pandemic makes these changes essential, we plan to turn the necessity of remote collaborations into a real improvement in the league going forward. This can be our new model for global outreach and a more rigorous qualification process for future, more normal, competition years.

These two key upgrades will lower the barrier of entry for new smaller teams and use a distributed model of Preliminaries to determine the Best-In-Class robots in each of our categories for Mobility, Dexterity, Exploration and Mapping:

• Focus team robot development and demonstration on the smallest, easiest tests to fabricate, and cheapest set of tests that are on the critical path toward operationally significant. This means as many teams as possible, including those who could not normally travel to the competition, to build the apparatuses and participate. In addition to more academic teams, we hope that this also enables more makerspaces and responder organizations to field teams.
• Enable crowd-sourced scoring of uncut trial videos by all participating teams so they learn from each other’s implementations and verify each other’s scores. The tests are already compatible with video scoring. We did this for the DARPA Robotics Challenge during qualifications and it worked well. We would add requirements for statistical significance (e.g. requiring 10x 20 minute runs in a particular apparatus, with a particular configuration, with uncut video showing the run as well as details of the apparatus and robot), over the course of an extended time (1 or 2 months leading up to the competition).
• Remote Proctoring: The top teams with live teleconference trials with members of the Organizing Committee. This will re-evaluate the systems to extend whatever number of trials we required to get to this point.
• Test Facilities: There are a number of test facilities around the world that host the tests. Emergency responder organizations too. They can potentially accommodate visiting teams and proctor them in the tests for locations and at times when this is safe. This is good for teams that maybe cannot fabricate the tests themselves or don’t feel confident conducting trials.
• Best-In-Class Award Certificates can be given out by RoboCup to any team that exceeds a set threshold across ALL the tests in the category as shown in our typical radar charts. We’ll have such extensive statistical significance for each test across more teams performing more trials that we’ll be able to confidently identify the normalized scoring thresholds for levels of performance, such as Gold, Silver, or Bronze.

Of course there are still many additional updates to the rules and additional procedures that will be necessary to make such a competition a success. We will be providing more updates shortly!

Cheers!

– The RoboCupRescue Robot League committee