Rescue Simulation 3.6.3 Violations

RoboCupJunior Rescue RoboCupJunior Rescue Simulation
1

Hi,
We would appreciate some clarifications regarding rule 3.6.3 (“Violations”), specifically in relation to computer vision:

  1. Any software specifically designed to complete any single primary task of RoboCupJunior Rescue,
    e.g., any letter recognition libraries such as Tesseract or EasyOCR, etc., will be prohibited.

Assumption:
We are relatively new to computer vision techniques and may not have a complete understanding of the subject. We want to ensure clear communication and appreciate your help in finding a common language.

Our request
We are diligently working to interpret this rule objectively, but we seek further clarification on its boundaries. We are concerned about unintentional rule violations while also aiming to avoid reinventing the wheel.

  1. Can we utilize an existing model, such as those available in thetf2 model zoo, and train it from scratch using our own dataset?
  2. If using an existing architecture is not allowed (as creating a new one is inconceivable for the competition’s objectives), would we be required to implement functions like model fitting ourselves?
  3. Are we responsible for creating loss functions as well, if we need to develop our own architecture?
  4. If the use of a model from the Model Zoo is permitted, are other real-time object detection systems also allowed?

To clarify further, we do not intend to use an existing pre-trained object detection model. We have prepared our own dataset, and the training phase will commence with random weights. However, we are struggling to determine the specific boundary defined by the rule.

We appreciate any assistance you can provide in helping us.

2 Likes
2

Hi Mites,

Thank you for asking. Hope the following will clarify the restriction…

Any pre-existing library provides APIs to detect or localize an alphabet, an object, a black hole, a brown tile, path to navigate a wall, any scoring items particulars will not be allowed.

Any modeling tool which consists of pre-existing trained algorithms so that you do not need to do any sort of training, it will not be allowed.

So, “… We have prepared our own dataset, and the training phase will commence with random weights…” - you are doing your own training, it sounds good.

When you deploy or use any algorithm to solve the problems, just be ready to illustrate and explain how you did your experiments and train your data if applicable.

Hope this helps.

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Elizabeth Mabrey
2023 RCJ Rescue Committee