DM: Robocup European Championship-2000 Amsterdam

[Stefano Cagnoni]

(apologies for multiple copies)

*******************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