*******************CALL FOR PAPERS AND PARTICIPATION*******************
Robocup European Championship-2000 Amsterdam
The First Robocup European Championship 2000 and Conferences
28 May - 2 June
University Sport Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands
See http://www.robocup.org
The Robot World Cup, RoboCup, is an international initiative to foster AI and intelligent robotics research by providing a standard problem, a soccer game, where a wide range of technologies can be integrated and examined. This is the first European RoboCup event, and it will be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The competitions will take place at the Sport Center of the University of Amsterdam. The participation of the best teams of this European Championship in the Robot World Cup in Australia will be sponsored by the organizing commitee.
The first Robot World Cup, RoboCup-97, was held in Nagoya, Japan, in August 1997, and included the participation of more than 40 teams. The second Robot World Cup, RoboCup-98, was held in Paris, in July 98, and more than 60 teams participated. In 1999 the third Robot Soccer World Cup was held in Stockholm, Sweden. In August 2000 the fourth Robot Soccer World Cup Games will be held in Australia. Future scheduled RoboCup events are: RoboCup-2001 Seattle, RoboCup-2002 Japan. Sites for 2003 and after are not decided.
In order for a team of robot agents to play a soccer game, different technologies must be integrated, including design principles of autonomous agents, multi-agent collaboration, strategy acquisition, real-time reasoning, sensor-fusion, and learning. RoboCup is a task for a team of multiple fast-moving robot agents in a dynamic, non-deterministic, and adversarial environment. The different leagues emphasize different aspects of the challenge of creating teams of autonomous agents.
As a test bed for progressing the technology of multiple agent systems Robocup serves to bring together teams of researchers in a cooperative environment. It is a condition of entry that teams must disclose the technology used in the creation of their teams. The competitions themselves are very exciting and provide both educational and entertainment interest for the audience that attends Robocup events.
Real Robot Small League (F180):
Teams of up to five real robots of small size (approximately 15 cm in
diameter) compete on a 1.525 x 2.74 m field.
Real Robot Medium League (F2000): Teams of up to five real robots of medium size (approximately 50cm in diameter) compete on a 4.575 x 8.22m field.
Simulation League:
Software agents play soccer using the RoboCup soccer server simulator,
available from the RoboCup Web page. The competition will be played on
a parallel machine running Linux. The registered teams will have the
possibility to experiment on this system during the last two months
before Robocup European Championship 2000. We plan to have also an
application available which can be downloaded, so that people can see
the simulation competition on Internet in real-time.
Visualization A number of groups in the world work on 3D visualization systems of the log-file data of the robot simulator, automatic commenting systems and automatic systems for the selection of the most challenging events during the competition. These systems will be demonstrated during the event
Legged Robot League: A demo of Sony legged robots playing soccer games will be given.
Workshop: A workshop will be held to present and discuss technical details of the robots and software agents which participate in the competition, as well as other research and educational topics related to RoboCup. The workshop submission is open to anyone interested in science and technology related to RoboCup. It is not limited to participants of RoboCup competition program. RoboCup commentators, 3D visualization, theoretical analysis of real soccer games, application and relevance of RoboCup to significant social program, specific technologies which may be applied to improve RoboCup's team performance, educational issues, etc, are all welcome contributions to the workshop program. Post-workshop proceedings will be published from Springer-Verlag as a sub-line of Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence (LNAI). Details about the paper submission will be made available at the RoboCup official Web site.
Rules and selection: Details of the rules for the different competitions are available at the RoboCup official Web site http://www.robocup.org. Selection of teams to compete at RoboCup is the responsibility of each league. Teams wishing to enter should consult the league pages at the RoboCup official Web site and take care to read the qualification requirements carefully. General Questions on RoboCup may be send to kitano@csl.sony.co.jp.
Important All teams intending to participate will have to make a pre-registration before the 31st of December 1999. The registration form will be made available on the RoboCup Web home page.
For registration and all questions on Robocup European Championship-2000, please contact
Gerrie Rijnsburger gerrie@nat.vu.nl, Faculty of Sciences, De Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Tel. +31 20 444 7891, Fax +31 20 444 7899.
All papers for the workshop should be submitted in a camera ready fashion before February 15 2000 to
Dr. W. van der Hoek, wiebe@cs.uu.nl, Computer Science Department, Utrecht University, Padualaan 14, De Uithof, 3584 CH Utrecht, Tel. +31 - 30 - 253 3599, Fax. +31 - 30 - 251 3791
Important Dates:
Obligatory pre-registration: December 31, 1999 Deadline for papers for workshop: February 15, 2000 Final registration Robocup European Championship. Access to the parallel LINUX system: April 1, 2000 Simulation: teams can test their code on the target machine of the competition: April and May 2000 Simulation teams deliver their final code: May 27 (Saturday) Small/Middle size: teams can set up and test their equipment: May 28 - May 29 Pre-round in parallel: May 30 - May 31 Robocup European Championship Workshop: June 1 Quarter, Semi-finals and finals: June 2
International Organizing Committee
Robocup European Championship 2000
The International Organizing Committee should be representative for the European countries involved in Robocup, and reflect the Robocup activity in the different countries.
Also advisory members from the USA and Japan would strengthen the Eurobocup 2000 event.
Belgium Andeas Birk - VU Brussels (Small Size) cyrano@arti.vub.ac.be
United Kingdom Huosheng Hu - Essex hhu@essex.ac.uk
Finland Jarkko Kemppainen - Oulu jarkko.kemppainen@nokia.com
France Pierre Blazevic blazevic@robot.uvsq.fr
Germany Gerhard Kraetzschmar - Ulm (Vice co-chair) gkk@acm.org
Andreas Zell - Tuebingen zell@Informatik.Uni-Tuebingen.de
Raul Rojas - Berlin rojas@inf.fu-berlin.de
Italy Enrico Pagello - Padua (Vice co-chair) epv@dei.unipd.it
Giovanni Adorni - Parma (Workshop) adorni@ce.unipr.it
Netherlands Frans Groen - Amsterdam (chair) groen@wins.uva.nl
Portugal Pedro Lima (Middle Size) pal@isr.ist.utl.pt
Russia Leo Stankevich - St.Petersburg stankevitch@phtf.stu.neva.ru
Spain Josep De la Rosa - Girona peplluis@eia.udg.es
Sweden Silvia Coradeschi - Linkoping silco@ida.liv.se
Advisors
USA Manuela Veloso - CMU mmv@school.coral.cs.cmu.edu
Peter Stone - CMU pstone@research.att.com
Japan Hiroaki Kitano kitano@symbio.jst.go.jp
Asada asada@er.ams.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp
Local Organizers
Dr. H.J.W. Spoelder - Free University Amsterdam (Chairman/Simulator) hs@nat.vu.nl
Dr. ir. B.J.A. Krose - University of Amsterdam (Education) krose@wins.uva.nl
Dr. ir. P.P. Jonker - Delft University of Technology (Middle Size) P.P.Jonker@PH.TN.TUDelft.NL
Dr. S. Stramigioli - Delft University of Technology (Small Size) S.Stramigioli@ITS.TUDelft.NL
Dr. W. van de Hoek - University of Utrecht (Workshop) wiebe@cs.uu.nl
For further details, please visit
http://robocup.ce.unipr.it/Eurobocup and http://robocup.ce.unipr.it/Eurobocup/org-Eurobocup.html
or download the files (MS Word97 format) http://robocup.ce.unipr.it/Eurobocup/CFP-Eurobocup.doc http://robocup.ce.unipr.it/Eurobocup/org-Eurobocup.doc