Call for Proposals: RoboCup@Home Standard Platform User Teams

The RoboCup Federation selected Toyota Human Support Robot (HSR) and Softbank Robotics Pepper as the Standard Platforms for RoboCup@Home.

The first competition using these platforms will be held at RoboCup-2017 Nagoya in addition to the established competition, which continues to be open for any robot platforms.

We invite user teams that plan to participate in RoboCup-2017 Nagoya to apply for the Standard Platforms.

Up to 12 user teams are selected. The HSR is leased at approximately 100K Japanese Yen per month. If the user team participates in RoboCup-2017 and meets the conditions specified by Toyota, HSR is leased free of charge for a certain period of time. For detailed conditions, visit [ http://www.robocupathome.org/athome-spl/hsr_conditions01 ]

B) Softbank Robotics Pepper

       Up to 12 teams are selected. More details are in SoftBank Pepper conditions

1. How to obtain a Standard Platform

1.1 Proposal submission

Proposals should be sent to the Selection Committee as follows. The Proposals are evaluated through peer-review process.

• To: spl-sc@robocupathome.org
• Subject: [@Home-SP] (YourTeamName)
• Body: (Please fill in the following basic information)

1. Team Name:
2. Country:
3. Affiliation:
4. Team Leader Name:
5. Contact information (E-mail):
6. Link to a team web site:
7. Proposal as an attachment file
8. Standard Platform: [Choose HSR or Pepper, not both]
   

1.2 Additional notes on Proposals

• The Proposal must be submitted in a pdf format
• The size of the Proposal is limited to 6MB
• A team can apply for only one platform. If identical Proposals are submitted to apply for both platforms, they are automatically rejected.

2. Deadline for Proposal submissions

Nov. 25, 2016 23:59 PST (extended)

3. Instructions for the Website

The information to be placed on the website should include the following:

• Team members
• Description of the approaches and information on scientific achievements
• Relevant publications (last 5 years, preferably with links for download)
• Relevant photos/videos that show the skills of the team
• Link to repositories with software for the community (optional)
• Previous participation in RoboCup (optional)

4. Instructions for the Proposal

The Proposal must be based on the official league Team Description Paper (TDP) template. It should be in a pdf format and must contain the following information:

• Description of the approach planned to be implemented on the robot
• List of externally available components that are planned to be implemented
  • Open source software, web services, etc.
• Innovative technology and scientific contribution
• Focus of research/research interests
• Re-usability of the system for other research groups
• Applicability of the approach in the real world

The Proposal should go into detail about the technical and scientific approach, but the website should be designed for a broader audience.

The length of the Proposal is limited to 6 pages. Please use the same Springer LNAI format used in the RoboCup Symposium submissions. No change in margins, paragraphs and font size are allowed.

http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0

You may download the template from https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/TDPTemplate.git

5. Evaluation criteria

The Proposals will be judged by the following criteria:

• Proposal
  • Clarity, scientific contributions, re-usability by the league, applicability in real world
• Website
  • Multimedia, publications from past 5 years, downloadable content, open-source software and other contributions
• Relevant scientific contribution/publications
  • Downloadable papers and open-source software
• Novelty of approach

6. Contact

Please send any questions to: spl-sc@robocupathome.org

7. Important notes

• The suppliers are not allowed to sell, export, lease and/or ship their products to natural or legal persons and to entities and countries which are subject to international sanctions or prohibitions. Since Selection Committee cannot answer this issue, please ask the supplier directly.

• Toyota HSR: xr-hsr-info@mail.toyota.co.jp
• Softbank Robotics Pepper:  salesadmin@aldebaran.com, supplychain@aldebaran.com, and cc to cleguyader@aldebaran.com
• Being selected as a user team does not mean that the team is qualified to participate in RoboCup 2017 Nagoya. Team qualification will be separately conducted in February 2017.
• After selected as a Standard Platform user team, the team has to make an agreement with the supplier in compliance with the supplier's instructions.

8. RoboCup@Home Standard Platform League Selection Committee