Encouraged by the initiative of the Rescue OC and TC, the OC and TC of the RCJ Soccer would like to hold a so called “virtual poster session” for all the RCJ Soccer teams around the world.
In the past few years, poster sessions have become the highlight of the RCJ Soccer event for many. It is the place where teams can showcase their work, find out what the other teams did, share new ideas and get inspired to work on them in the future. Despite this difficult situation, we still think it would be great if there was a place for the teams to get together and present their work with the broader RCJ Soccer community.
The basic idea of the Virtual Poster Session is to have a Soccer Poster session, just in a virtual way. And although the RoboCup Federation will not issue awards this year, the best team’s poster will still be acknowledged by the RCJ Soccer OC and TC.
Who can participate?
Thanks to the event being virtual, there are no capacity limits. We invite all RCJ Soccer teams around the world with participants who are under the RCJ age limit to participate.
How can I participate?
We invite all the teams that intend to participate to create a digital poster according to the RCJ Soccer Poster rubric of 2019. Furthermore, to imitate the “presentation” part of the poster session, we would like to encourage you to create a short 5 minute video that would highlight the most important parts of your poster and serve as a starting point for the discussions. That said, creating a video is not mandatory.
Sounds like fun! Where can I sign up?
Please produce both the poster and the video in English. Just as is the case at RCJ in general, Mentors can provide support for creating the poster and/or the video, but it ultimately needs to be independent work done by the students.
To take part in the Virtual Poster Session, we would first like to ask you to indicate that you plan to take part in it by filling out the following form by June 19th 2020 23:59:59 GMT June 23rd 2020 23:59:59 GMT: https://forms.gle/V8DWg9H7SbaWqttv6
Once you do that, you will receive a an email with further instructions which will ask you to submit both the poster as well as a video (should you choose to create one). The deadline for doing so will be June 25th 2020 23:59:59 GMT (when the 2020 competition was supposed to start).
What will the poster session look like?
On the day of the event (TBD), During the event (June 26th 2020 08:00:00 GMT to June 28th 2020 08:00:00 GMT) a specific subforum of the RoboCupJunior Forum will be made public. Each participating team will have its own thread, in which anyone will be able to find their poster and video (should they choose to create one). This thread will serve as the “poster stand” for this particular team: anyone can stop by in it and ask the team some questions. Just as during the standard poster session, the team will be expected to monitor the forum thread throughout the day and respond to any questions they may receive this way.
Just as during the standard poster session, the OC and TC will also try to participate, ask questions and judge the posters based on the RCJ Soccer Poster rubric of 2019. Furthermore, once the event finishes, all the participating teams will have the chance to vote for the poster they liked the most. Although the RoboCup Federation will not issue any trophies this year, the RCJ Soccer TC and OC will give out various awards for the best posters (and ever-lasting glory for participating in the first RCJ Soccer Virtual Poster Session)!
Why should I participate?
Although you may not get a prize from the RoboCup Federation, The RCJ Soccer Virtual Poster Session is a great opportunity to share what you’ve been working on, gather feedback and new ideas, figure out what would make sense to work on for the next year and get to know other RCJ Soccer teams a bit better.
Furthermore, this will be very helpful to the OC and TC when deciding what rule changes to consider for the future as it will show how the league progresses, even if we sadly cannot meet in person.
As a bonus, the RCJ Soccer OC and TC will gather all the submissions together and add them all to a single place (something like the awesome lists: https://github.com/Kiloreux/awesome-robotics). Along with the photos from the poster sessions from the past years, we would like it to become a growing repository of RCJ Soccer knowledge, which should be useful for beginners who want to try it out as well as advanced competitors.
Finally, although it will be nothing like the in-person version, but with enough teams participating we still think it will be a ton of fun. The OC and TC will be there so make sure to join us, if you can!
I still have some questions
Please feel free to ask them – either right here on this particular thread or create a new one, if you think that would be more appropriate.
It seems like we are going to use this forum much more (and also be way more active), so do not hesitate to ask.