Hi everybody,
we have tested small Bluetooth modules at RoboCup Junior Bangkok 2022 that provide a referee-controllable GPIO to start and stop the robot. For RoboCup Bordeaux 2023 (and only for the international competition) we have put into the rules that being able to integrate this will be required in some form. Current PDF versions of the 2023-draft-rules are linked from this thread
The idea is to build a communications system over the coming years (a little bit more every year starting 2024) that will make it easier for teams to implement robot-to-robot communications in a standardized way so that useful communication between robots from different teams can be accomplished for SuperTeam games. For this purpose we the idea would be to āupgradeā from the single start/stop GPIO to a UART (or maybe SPI or I²C, suggest what you think would work best) connection that standardized messages could be sent and received through. Message types could be:
- Heartbeat to let team member robots know a robot is still there (if a robot gets stopped or removed from the game this would stop and other robots could adapt)
- Coordination messages for robots to choose which robot(s) play which positions (defender, attack, other roles in SuperTeams)
- Ball location estimate
- Robotās own position estimate
- Position estimates of other robots
- Custom data packets
- Anything you suggest here
We would like to provide standardized data types for as many things as we can and make those the easiest to use so robots from different teams can communicate most effectively without teams having to change much of their code.
What do you think about this idea? It is in the very early stages so all feedback is welcome.
Best Regards
David