Call for Participation

RoboCup@Home Open Platform League 2018

Note: The qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home 2018 will be differentiated for the three sub-leagues (OPL, DSPL, SSPL) to better accommodate different organization needs. For each call please visit http://www.robocupathome.org/.

The Open Platform League of RoboCup@Home may issue up to two Calls for Participation. In the first CFP, held in 2017, up to 12 teams may be selected and must send a participation confirmation before February 25th, 2018. When not all 12 qualified teams confirms their attendance, a second CFP will be issued. All teams applying in the second CFP will be considered as confirmed in case of qualify. Non-attending confirmed teams will be banned from @Home (all Leagues) for 3 years.

RoboCup is an international scientific initiative with the goal to advance the state of the art of intelligent robots through competitions (RoboCup@Home, RoboCup Soccer, RoboCup Rescue, RoboCup@Work and RoboCup Junior).

The RoboCup@Home league aims to develop service and assistive robot technology with high relevance for future personal domestic applications. It is the largest international annual competition for autonomous service robots and is part of the RoboCup initiative. A set of benchmark tests is used to evaluate the robots' abilities and performance in a realistic home environment setting. Focus lies on the following domains but is not limited to: Human-Robot-Interaction and Cooperation, Navigation and Mapping in dynamic environments, Computer Vision and Object Recognition under natural light conditions, Object Manipulation, Adaptive Behaviors, Behavior Integration, Ambient Intelligence, Standardization and System Integration.

This message describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home League 2018.

Important dates:

The qualification procedure consists of the following two steps:

Step 1) Intention of Participation (strongly recommended)

The team sends an email to the Organizing Committee (oc@robocupathome.org) to indicate your intention to participate in the RoboCup@Home 2018 event, including the following basic information:

Only one team leader can be specified per team.

The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Participation] (YourTeamName)

Please check the email is encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set.

**** Deadline: Sunday, 15th Oct. 2017 23:59 GMT *****

Step 2) Qualification Material Submission (mandatory)

The team ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee (oc@robocupathome.org) to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup@Home 2018 event. Please fill in the following information:

The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Participation] (YourTeamName)

Considerations:

• Only one platform can be specified per team.
• Only one team leader can be specified per team.
• Only one contact email can be specified per team.
• All the publications and software to be evaluated for qualification ***MUST*** be in the team's website.
• The email must be encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set.

**** Deadline: Sunday, Nov. 5, 2017 23:59 GMT *****

Step 3) Participation confirmation (mandatory)

All qualified teams ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee (oc@robocupathome.org) to confirm (or cancel) their participation in the RoboCup@Home 2018 event. Confirming attendance implies that the team has sufficient resources to register commits to attend to the event.

To confirm participation, please fill in the following information:

The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Confirmation] (YourTeamName)

Remark: Qualified teams who miss the participation confirmation will be disqualified automatically.

**** Deadline: Sunday, Feb. 25, 2018 23:59 GMT *****

Instructions for the Team Video
===========================

In order to proof a running hardware, each team has to provide a qualification video.

As a minimum requirement for qualification, the video must show the robot(s) successfully solving a task involving the integration of at least 5 different abilities, such as: environmental reasoning, high-level task planning, human-robot interaction, localization, manipulation, object recognition, people recognition, etc. Is strongly advised to show at least one Stage 2 test of the current or last year's rulebook.

Remarks:

• The shown task execution must look continuous, smooth, and robust.
• When speeding-up video, the speed factor must be indicated.
• The language spoken and shown in the video must be English. When using any other languages, translations must be included.
• We strongly suggest upload videos to Youtube.
• Videos sent will be uploaded/displayed in the league's youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists"

Copyright note:When sending videos for qualification, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, modify, distribute, upload, publish, and use the multimedia material to promote the event and the league as we find convenient.

Instructions for the TDP
========================

The TDP is an 8-pages long scientific paper, detailing information on the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, while including also the following:

• Innovative technology and scientific contribution
• Focus of research/research interests
• Re-usability of the system for other research groups
• Applicability of the robot in the real world
• Photo(s) of the robot (in annex).
• Brief, compact list of the 3rd party robot's software (e.g. ROS vision should be included, but not OpenCV. In annex).
• Brief, compact description of the robot's hardware (in annex).
• Brief, compact description of all external computing devices, if any (in annex).

For the TDP, please use the Springer LNAI format used in the RoboCup Symposium submissions and limit yourself to 8 pages without altering margins or spacing. You may download a template for the TDP from here.

Remark: The language for the TDP, its graphics, tables, images, and all additional content must be English. Content in other languages must be translated.

While the TDP goes into detail about the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, the website should be designed for a broader audience, including:

• Photos of the robot(s)
• Videos of the robot(s)
• Description of the approaches and information on scientific achievements
• Relevant publications (last 5 years, preferably available to download)
• Link to repositories with software for the community
• Team members
• Previous participation in RoboCup
• Participation and rankings in local RoboCup tournaments

Qualification materials will be judged by the following criteria:

• Team description paper (clarity, scientific contributions, re-usability by the league, applicability in real world)
• Qualification Video (navigation, human-robot interaction, people/object recognition, object manipulation and new features)
• Performance in local tournaments and previous competitions.
• Website (multimedia, publications from last 5 years, downloadable content, open-source software and other contributions)
• Relevant Scientific contribution/publications (downloadable papers and open-source software)
• Novelty of approach (what you do is new for @Home)

We encourage teams to produce self-explicative videos for a general audience where complex tasks are solved. For Team Description Papers focus on the scientific contribution and avoid brief descriptions of the overall system.

Note to experienced competitors: Major changes are being done in the rulebook. You may download the latest version from: https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook.

With kind regards, and looking forward to see your team in Nagoya,
The 2018 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees