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 2022, simulaton league.

Important dates:

The qualification procedure consists of a single step:

Step 1) 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 2022 event. Please fill in the following information:

The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2022-Qualification] (YourTeamName)

Considerations:

• Only one team leader can be specified per team.
• Only one team video url can be specified per team.
• Only one Dockerfile 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.

IMPORTANT: Teams that didn’t obtain qualification during the first CFP are allowed to submit their improved materials adapted to show compliance with the simulator.

**** Deadline: Sunday, February 13, 2022 23:59 GMT *****
**** Deadline: Sunday, February 27, 2022 23:59 GMT *****

Step 2) Participation confirmation

Teams qualified during the Second Call for Participation do not require to confirm attendance.

Instructions for the Qualification Material

Instructions for the Team Video:

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

As a minimum requirement for qualification, the video must show the HSR virtual robot successfully solving any of the tasks of the 2021 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 Robots Only: A virtual HSR must be used for the simulation. No cusom models are allowed.

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
  • Brief, compact list of the 3rd party robot’s software (e.g. include MoveIt/YOLO)
  • Brief, compact list of 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**** (any submissions over this length will be disqualified).
• 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.

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.

***** Exceeding the number of pages will automatically void your application *****.

Instructions for the Dockerfile

The software used to run the test demonstrated in the Qualification Video ***must*** be contained within a deploy ready Docker container/image (Dockerfile) in a git repository from which the Organizing Committee can pull.
The provided Docker container/image must be based on the official DSPL Dockerfile at https://github.com/hsr-project/hsrb_robocup_dspl_docker.

Submitted Dockerfiles may be tested in a standard simulator to check compliance and compatibility. This process will ensure that applicants know how to build images that can be automatically tested and scored during the competition following the 2021 Rulebook and Q&A Sessions guidelines.

***** Altering the simulator, score system, or robot model will automatically void your application *****.

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 [virtual] robot(s)
• Videos of the [virtual] 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
• Link to the deploy-ready git repository with the Dockerfile used in the Qualification video.

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:

In this Second Call for Participation, all open participation slots will be assigned. In order to qualify, a team must meet the minimum selection requirements approved by the Executive Committee. However, meeting the minimum requirements won’t automatically grant a participation slot. Only the top teams meeting the selection criterion will qualify for participation. The number of open participation slots varies per league with a saturation number of 12 teams per league

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.

With kind regards, and looking forward to see your team online,
The 2022 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees