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 page describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home 2019.

Important dates:

The qualification procedure consists of the following three 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 2019 event, including the following basic information:

Only one team leader can be specified per team.

The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2019-Participation] (YourTeamName)

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

**** Deadline: Sunday, 20th of January, 2019 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 2019 event. Please fill in the following information:

The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2019-Qualification] (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.
• Only one team video url 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, 17th of February, 2019 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 2019 event. Confirming attendance implies that the team has sufficient resources to register, and commits to attend to the event.

To confirm participation, please fill in the following information:

The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2019-Confirmation] (YourTeamName)

Remark: Qualified teams who miss the participation confirmation will be disqualified automatically and the participation slots assigned to other teams.

**** Deadline: Sunday, 31st of March, 2019 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”
• Standard Platforms Only: Teams ***MUST*** use the standard-platform robot in their Team Video. SPL teams featuring a non standard-platform robot will have their application voided.

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 at convenience.

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:

• TDP
  • Group’s research focus and interests.
  • Innovative technology and scientific contribution
    • Please specify when your research is being used by other teams or research groups
    • Please specify when you are using software from other teams
  • Brief, general description of the system when solving a [domestic] task (applicability in the real world)
    • The impact of your research must be clearly visible
  • Maximum length is 8 pages (including figures and citations)
• Annex
  • Photo(s) of the robot
  • Brief, compact list of the 3rd party robot’s software (e.g. include MoveIt/YOLO)
  • Brief, compact description of all external computing devices, if any
  • Brief, compact description of the robot’s hardware (OPL Only)
  • Please mark with an asterisk home-made software solutions
  • Annex should be appended after the References
  • There is no page limit for annex, but a maximum of one page is strongly encouraged
• TDP length is 8 pages + annex
• DSPL and SSPL: The robot depicted in the TDP or Team Video ***MUST*** be the league’s standard one

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 (including references but excluding the annex). You may download a template for the TDP from here. Exceeding the number of pages will automatically void your application.

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

Copyright note:All TDPs sent for qualification may be made publicly available in the RoboCup @Home Wiki for further reference. On submitting, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, distribute, upload, publish, and use the manuscript to promote the event and the league at convenience.

Instructions for the Web site

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

Remark: No IP addresses will be accepted as website.

Remark: Only documented active software repositories are considered as contributions to the league. It must be clear and straightforward to other teams how to use your software.

Qualification and evaluation criteria:

Teams must meet the minimum selection requirements approved by the Executive Committee in order to qualify. However, meeting the minimum requirements won’t automatically grant a participation slot. Only the top n_l teams meeting the selection criterion can qualify for participation, being n_l the number of available slots in league l.

Qualification materials will be judged by the following criteria:

• Team description paper (clarity, scientific contributions, re-usability by the league, applicability in real world)
• Performance in local tournaments and previous competitions.
• Qualification Video (number of demonstrated abilities, integration, difficulty of the task, applicability in real world)
• 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. You’re encouraged to be part of the discussion of its ongoing development.

With kind regards, and looking forward to see your team in Sydney,
The 2019 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees