we’re opening the April 27th Soccer League Committee video call to the RoboCup Soccer Junior community at large. There are no particular items on the agenda yet, if there is anything specific you already know you would like to discuss please feel free to post below.
We are of course going to publish meeting notes so anybody who cannot make this timeslot (it is our regular one).
Please also let us know using the poll below if this particular time works for you so we can see if we need to add another.
Best Regards and hope to see you on the call
David
This timeslot works for me - I will be there
This timeslot would work for me, but not that day - same time another day would be good
This timeslot does not work for me on any day - it would need to be another time
Saturday the 27th of April (this Saturday) will be the Open Call meeting with the 2024 RCJ Soccer Organising Committee. I’ve gathered all topics requested from this Forum thread & other locations to add to the agenda. Please post any additional ideas you’d like to discuss in this thread or bring them to the meeting.
Date: 2024-04-27
Here: Margaux, Will, Adrián, Ivan, Giacomo Martinelli, Nicola Battiston, einsschlingel, Marek Maszay, MaTo Faltus, Fabian Weller, Rodrigo Molina Dominguez, Hikaru, Elias Braun, Raimondo Sgro, Hossein Babaki, Hugo Guererro, Matthes Neumann, Amy, Roy Martinez Furro, Javier, Leo Villegas, Rafael, Marek, Fabrizio
Notes:
Wi-Fi (again, because of the Wi-Fi 6E/7 Background)
We are working on it - trying to work around major as they have proprietary devices using the 2.4GHz spectrum that are very difficult to change
It is understood that 2.4GHz is widely more available, but that frequency is pejoratively allocated to major. 6Ghz is completely unused / unallocated, we are working on securing it for Junior to use
IR-Ball (self build & change of modulation)
No opposition to Mode C or D as the standard → no one used mode A
Rebranding of the leagues
No consensus on what to call it in future, other than more appropriate names is sensible
Standard → Entry League
LW Entry → LW Entry
LW → Infrared
Open → Vision
Discussion of award process (had a few thoughts about it)
Linked to live Rubric document
Feedback on soccer entry rule changes (till this date, a lot of the national competitions should be done)
Positive, changes have kept balance
Significantly less ability for “handed-down” robots with drive motor number limitations
→ 1200g for next year in entry (not lightweight entry)
Teams struggling with weight limit for stable robots
Technical challenges in general (they should be announced earlier)
Clarifications:
No modifications on Out of Bounds
Entry kicker test
Super team kicker test
Top Markers
“Out of bounds” no goal rule
Entry voltage
Neutral kickoff
Placing robots at kick off
Super team kickoff
LWL kicker power
We are aware it is very low - we intend to significantly increase for next year’s rules
Super team mercy rule for games as well
We will add into rules
Add kick power limit adjusted test for larger field size
Improve clarity for kickoff procedure
Rewriting the rules
We intend to rewrite the rules into a more cohesive document & improve clarity
This is a major task, could take some time
Motor Whitelist for 1v1 Standard Kit League
Request to add more motors to the list
Link was provided to forum thread to discuss this
Current motors seem evenly matched with Lego Robots
Field Size Changes / Standardisation
Question as to whether we foresee field changes any time in the near future
It would be very unlikely that any significant changes would happen in the next year or two
Field size for entry league was too variable
Robots in these leagues aren’t typically accurate enough to tell the difference
The field restrictions are such that FFL and other similar robotics competitions’ fields can be converted to RCJ Soccer with ease → improving accessibility as much as possible
The 2v2 leagues have stricter field size limitations for the more accurate robots
Slot allocation process for internationals
It is now an automated process
Please speak to your regional representative on this topic
Improved communications
We have the Discord & Forum and actively check those
For teams competing at the international tournament, the standard newsletter system of previous years will continue
We will start to email out to the registered teams around the start of June
We will also post the information Newsletters to the Discord & Forum
I see that the IR-Ball for lightweight league is proposed to switch from mode A to mode C or D.
Does this mean that the pulse duration of 38kHz IR sensors (such as TSSP58038) can no longer be used to tell the distance between sensor and the ball?
And If so, does anyone have other ways to tell the distance between the robot and the ball?
I thought of using some very fast ADC to capture the crests and troughs of 40kHz modulated signals received from IR photodiodes, then subtract trough value from crest value, but such ADCs are a bit expensive for us.
In my program, the distance between the robot and the ball is used to decide the path for the robot to approach the ball, so the ball distance would be a really useful information for us to program our robots.
it was proposed and discussed on the Discord some time ago. But the persons talking about it came to the conclusion, that switching the mode from the current one to another would not make anything easier. So we decided to let it be for the moment.
When it comes to using mode D instead of A it was discuses in this tread IR ball modulation change proposal but as someone who is making new balls mode D is almost certainly something that will happen in the future but for this year making such a big change (even when using TSSP sensors would work same way) is not possible.
We are intending to continue the same for the 2024 Eindhoven event, but discussed during the Open Call meeting that in future moving from Mode A to Mode C or Mode D would have negligible difference for teams detecting the ball.
Mode C and Mode D are a pure square wave with a 600hz and 1200hz frequency on the same 38kHz carrier. We are intending to review it further in future, we were just collecting consensus during the Open call meeting to guide our planning.
