Qualification

This page describes the qualification procedures for the Small Size League for RoboCup 2008. The qualification procedures are similar to those in recent years.

The organizing committee (OC) will assess the qualification material and report the results by March 1st, 2008.

Every team that wants to participate has to attend the following actions by February 15th, 2008 (11.59 PM, GMT+8):

• The team must have completed the preregistration procedure.
• The team must submit a Team Description Paper (TDP).
• The team must submit a Team Video.

Please pay attention to the following points:

• In past competitions, there have been teams that registered but failed to compete at the competition (turning up does not count). This behavior is unfair to the many other teams that could have competed in their place. Any team that registers for a competition and fails to compete will be barred from qualifying for the following competition year (unless the circumstances are exceptional). This rule was introduced for RoboCup 2004 and will be enforced for RoboCup 2008.
• Most communication will be done by e-mail using the Small Size mailing list. Pay attention to these e-mails and answer the OC's questions. A team that does not reply risks losing its qualified place.
• We understand that new teams may struggle meeting all of the qualification criteria below. We encourage new teams to submit qualification video material demonstrating their true current capabilities, while stating in their Team Description Paper (TDP) what is expected to be completed by July 1st, 2008. However, teams not meeting minimum required criteria will be considered for inclusion in competitions only after all teams submitting compliant qualification materials.
• Each team that passed the qualification or is in the waiting list must submit a message to the organizing committee to confirm whether the team has enough financial support to attend the competition. This message must be sent before March 20nd, 2008 (11.59 PM, GMT+8). If a team in the qualified list can not attend the conference, a team from the waiting list will be selected in the waiting order.

The Team Description Paper should focus on one or two main components of your developed system. We recommend you to choose topics that you feel are especially novel, important, or different from how other teams approach the problem, and/or other teams would be interested in reading about.

It is especially important to have clear, and focused explanations. You can assume that the audience is familiar with general Small Size League topics and can thus devote most of the TDP to the important issues. In particular, you should explain the technical details of how your approach works so that other researchers can repeat your results. In this way, other researchers can gain from your experience, as you will gain from theirs, and together we can achieve the goals of the RoboCup Initiative.

At the last competitions, there had been robots that did not comply with the Small Size rules. To sensitize all teams for regarding these rules, the following information should be included in the Team Description Paper: the height of the robot, the maximum diameter of its projection to the ground, and the maximum percentage of ball coverage (as defined in the Small Size rules).

New teams should clearly state their current robot capabilities and what is expected to be completed by July 1st, 2008.

Submission Information:

• The length of the TDP is limited to 12 pages.
• Please use the same Springer LNAI format as the symposium submissions (see RoboCup Symposium instructions).
• Papers should be sent as a zipped pdf or postscript file via e-mail to the organizing committee.
• The e-mail subject should be: 2008 TDP (YourTeamName).

Your team video must be at least 1 minute of unedited continuous footage. The qualification video can be either of the following types, although preference will be given to item 1 (then 2 and last 3):

1. A video of your robots participating in a RoboCup standard game (i.e. a game at RoboCup or one of the local regional competitions). The video should show obstacle avoidance, shooting and passing skill. The game should be based on contemporary rules (2004 and afterwards).
2. A video of your robots (there *must* be at least two moving robots) engaging in two or more of the following activities: a) One or more robots competing against an active robot goalkeeper. b) Two or more robot field players actively going to the ball and playing against one another. c) At least two robots playing cooperatively against 5 static or moving obstacles.
3. A video showing one or more robots partially demonstrating capabilities listed in item 2.

The team video is used by the OC to determine the readiness of a team to compete effectively and is part of the criteria in ranking teams in the qualification process. Teams are advised to submit a video that best demonstrates the readiness of the team to compete in an international competition.

Submission Information:

To submit the video footage, you must send an e-mail to the RoboCup Small Size mailing list and cc: it also to the organizing committee. The mail should contain the following information:

• Subject: 2008 Qualification Video (YourTeamName)
• The URL of the location of your video, which should be available via ftp or http.

Please pay attention to the following points:

• Please submit a single video file.
• The video must be stored on your own server.
• Do NOT send the video as an attachment to the mailing list nor to the organization committee!