If you are participating at the RoboCup for the first time, it can be hard to know what exactly to expect from the competition. To help you, we have compiled a rough overview of the general course of the event and a list of Do’s and Don’ts.
Opening hours
The opening hours for participating teams depend on the venue. We have no control over this.
In most years, participants can enter the event venue starting around 8am. Closing hours are usually around 10pm.
Please notice that public transport in some countries might be very poor after certain hours and depending on your hotel location you might want to leave earlier.
The communicated opening hours on social media are often for visitors during competition days and shorter than for participating teams. Keep an eye on the discord server and email newsletter for announcements regarding the opening hours.
General course of the Event
The RoboCup usually lasts 7 days:
- Two Setup days
- Four days of competition
- One day Symposium
Setup days
As the name suggests, the setup days are supposed to help your team settle in and prepare for the competition. You will have time to inspect the location, test your software on the fields and configure and calibrate your robots if needed.
On top of that, during the setup days we will perform a mandatory Robot Inspection with every team to make sure their robots comply with the rule book, especially with regards to the measurement guidelines for each division.
Additionally, you will have the option to perform a fitness test, where we will check the walking speed, stability and other benchmark indicators of your robot. While this is not mandatory this year, it will help us to track the overall progress of the league.
There will be no official matches scheduled during that those days and the venue is not open to visitors. However, if you want to test your robots and software in a real game, you can ask other teams for a scrimmage.
Competition days
After the setup day, the official competition will start. We will provide a time schedule on the website. Please check this regularly for your game times and referee duties.
Shortterm changes might also be announced over discord.
The first two or two and a half days are the preliminary round. The format changed between leagues and years in the past, but we found that a swiss system seems to work the best for most teams.
We guarantee each team a minimum of 6 games in the preliminary round, no matter your performance.
The best 8 teams will then go on to play in the knock out stage on day 3 and 4. Usually the third day consists of the last round of swiss stage in the morning, and the quarterfinals will be held in the afternoon. The last day of the competition is reserved for Semifinals and Finals.
Symposium
The RoboCup symposium is a chance for teams to present their research to the RoboCup Community.
During the day, there will be a number of presentations on selected papers. Inbetween there are poster sessions for the other submitted papers.
There will usually be snacks or lunch available at the symposium.
Additional appointments
In addition to the games and referee duties, there are a few other program points during the RoboCup where you are invited or expected to participate.
These are in general:
- Opening Ceremony, usually on the first day of competition
- Teamleader Meeting: each evening, the teamleaders of all participating teams are expected to participate in the teamleader meeting. Here, the state of the rules and league can be discussed, aswell as electing the comitees for the next year.
- League Photo, not scheduled yet. We would like to take a picture with all teams participating in the Humanoid Soccer League. Feel free to bring flags, banners, or a few of your robots to the picture aswell. In the past, we took the picture on one of the playing fields.
- Closing Ceremony: After the final games, an award ceremony will be held where teams get their trophies. Usually between the final game and the ceremony there will be some free time since all other RoboCup branches also need to finish their games. You can use this time to start packing up your gear or network with other teams
- Party: The day before finals or symposium concludes with a party in the evening as a chance for teams to celebrate together. Drinks and snacks are usually provided; how long the party goes depends on the organizers.
Testing on the fields
You are usually free to use any unused fields to test your robots and software. If you want to do a scrimmage with another team or require
Food and Snacks
Participants will have to organize food for themselves.
During the competition days, the venues will often have multiple food options available for purchase.
For the setup day however this is not always the case; make sure to bring some snacks with you or look up options to order food in the host country.
Please do NOT use your own devices like water heaters or coffee machines, as this might lead to power outages by overloading the power supply.
Network setup
Team numbers
Your team will be assigned a team number. This number will also be used for the subnet you can use. For any communication in robocup networks, make sure you are using the correct IP (xxx.xxx.TEAMNUMBER.DEVICENUMBER)
In the team area
Your team will be provided with LAN ports with internet access where you can plug in your own router.
Please notice that you are NOT allowed to use Wi-Fi on your own routers and all devices must be connected via ethernet cables. Make sure to bring an appropiate number of cables and network switches to provide a sufficient number of ethernet ports for your teams Laptops and robots.
Some venues might provide free Wi-Fi where you can connect your phone/tablet to the internet, however we cannot guarantee that.
On the fields
Each soccer field will provide its own network. This network does not have an internet connection. The networks are named after the field they belong to, please make sure to deploy your robot into the correct field network to not interfere with existing games.
In the field network, there is a computer with the game controller set up that you can use for testing.
During official matches, each team is allowed to connect one laptop to the network via LAN, for example to write protocols of the game.
List of DO’s and DONT’s
This list will be further extended with time as we
DO
- Use the provided method to make field reservations if you need the game controller
DONT
- Do NOT use any other team in the game controller while testing except your own team or Invisible
- Do NOT use your own GameController Instance on your PC within the field network, only use the GameController PC