A RoboCupJunior soccer match in motion.
In July this yr, 2500 members congregated in Bordeaux for RoboCup2023. The competitors includes quite a few leagues, and amongst them is RoboCupJunior, which is designed to introduce RoboCup to highschool youngsters, with the main target being on schooling. There are three sub-leagues: Soccer, Rescue and OnStage.
Marek Šuppa serves on the Government Committee for RoboCupJunior, and he informed us in regards to the competitors this yr and the newest developments within the Soccer league.
What’s your function in RoboCupJunior and the way lengthy have you ever been concerned with this league?
I began with RoboCupJunior fairly some time in the past: my first worldwide competitors was in 2009 in Graz, the place I used to be fortunate sufficient to compete in Soccer for the primary time. Our workforce didn’t do all that properly in that occasion however RoboCup made a deep impression and so I stayed round: first as a competitor and later to assist organise the RoboCupJunior Soccer league. Proper now I’m serving as a part of the RoboCupJunior Execs who’re accountable for the organisation of RoboCupJunior as a complete.
How was the occasion this yr? What have been among the highlights?
I suppose this yr’s theme or slogan, if we have been to present it one, can be “again to regular”, or one thing like that. Though RoboCup 2022 already occurred in-person in Thailand final yr after two years of a pandemic pause, it was in a slightly restricted capability, as COVID-19 nonetheless affected fairly just a few areas. It was nice to see that the RoboCup group was in a position to persevere and even thrive all through the pandemic, and that RoboCup 2023 was as soon as once more an occasion the place hundreds of robots and roboticists meet.
It might even be tough to do that query justice with out thanking the native French organisers. They have been truly able to organise the occasion in 2020 but it surely received cancelled on account of COVID-19. However they didn’t hand over on the concept and managed to place collectively an superior occasion this yr, for which we’re very grateful.
Examples of the robots utilized by the RoboCupJunior Soccer groups.
Turning to RoboCupJunior Soccer particularly, may you speak in regards to the mission of the league and the way you, as organisers, go about realising that mission?
The mission of RoboCupJunior consists of two competing targets: on one hand, it must be a problem that’s approachable, attention-grabbing and related for (principally) highschool college students and on the identical time it must be intently associated to the RoboCup “Main” challenges, that are tackled by college college students and their mentors. We’re therefore repeatedly attempting to each make it extra compelling and charming for the scholars and on the identical time guarantee it’s technical sufficient to assist them develop in direction of the RoboCup “Main” challenges.
One of many methods we do that’s by introducing what we name “SuperTeam” challenges, wherein groups from respective nations type a so-called “SuperTeam” and compete towards one other “SuperTeam” as if these have been distinct groups. In RoboCupJunior Soccer the “SuperTeams” are composed of 4 to 5 groups and so they compete on a discipline that’s six occasions bigger than the “normal” fields which might be used for the person video games. Whereas within the particular person matches every workforce can play with two robots at most (leading to a 2v2 recreation) in a SuperTeam match every SuperTeam fields 5 robots, which means there are 10 robots that play on the SuperTeam discipline throughout a SuperTeam match. The setup is similar to the Division B of the Small Dimension League of RoboCup “Main”.
The SuperTeam video games have existed in RoboCupJunior Soccer since 2013, so for fairly some time, and the suggestions we obtained on them was overwhelmingly optimistic: it was a whole lot of enjoyable for each the members in addition to the spectators. However in comparison with the Small Dimension League video games there have been nonetheless two noticeable variations: the robots didn’t have a manner of speaking with each other and moreover, the referees didn’t have a manner of speaking with the robots. The outcome was that not solely was there little coordination amongst robots of the identical SuperTeam, every time the sport wanted to be stopped, the referees needed to bodily run after the robots on the sector to catch them and do a kickoff after a purpose was scored. Though hilarious, it’s removed from how we might think about the SuperTeam video games to look.
The RoboCupJunior Soccer Normal Communication Modules purpose to do each. The module itself is a small machine that’s connected to every robotic on the SuperTeam discipline. These units are all related through Bluetooth to a single smartphone, via which the referee can ship instructions to all robots on the sector. The units themselves additionally assist direct message alternate between robots on a single SuperTeam, which means the groups would not have to speculate into determining how one can talk with the opposite robots however could make use of a typical platform. The units, in addition to their firmware, are open supply, which means not solely that everybody can construct their very own Normal Communication Module in the event that they’d like but in addition that the group can take part in its growth, which makes it an attention-grabbing addition to RoboCupJunior Soccer.
RoboCupJunior Soccer groups preparing for the competitors.
How did this new module work out within the competitors? Did you see an enchancment in expertise for the groups and organisers?
On this first large public take a look at we centered on exploring how (and whether or not) these modules can enhance the gameplay – particularly the “chasing robots at kickoff”. Though we’ve finished “lab experiments” up to now and had some empirical proof that it ought to work slightly properly, this was the primary time we tried it in an actual competitors.
All in all, I might say that it was a really optimistic experiment. The modules themselves did work fairly properly and for a few of us, who occurred to have expertise with “robotic chasing” talked about above, it was form of a magical feeling to see the robots cease proper on the principle referee’s whistle.
We additionally came upon potential areas for enchancment sooner or later. The modules themselves would not have an influence supply of their very own and have been powered by the robots themselves. We didn’t suppose this may be an issue however within the “actual world” take a look at it transpired that the voltage ranges the robots are able to offering fluctuates considerably – for example when the robotic decides to aggressively speed up – which in flip means among the modules disconnect when the voltage is lowered considerably. Nonetheless, it ended up being a pleasant lesson for everybody concerned, one which we will definitely be taught from once we design the subsequent iterations.
The livestream from Day 4 of RoboCupJunior Soccer 2023. This stream contains the SuperTeam finals and the technical challenges. You can too view the livestream of the semifinals and finals from day three right here.
May you inform us in regards to the emergence of deep-learning fashions within the RoboCupJunior leagues?
That is one thing we began to watch lately which stunned us organisers, to some extent. In our day-to-day jobs (that’s, when we’re not organising RoboCup), many people, the organisers, work in areas associated to robotics, laptop science, and engineering usually – with a few of us additionally doing analysis in synthetic intelligence and machine studying. And whereas we all the time thought that it could be nice to see extra of the cutting-edge analysis being utilized at RoboCupJunior, we all the time dismissed it as one thing too superior and/or tough to arrange for the highschool college students that comprise nearly all of RoboCupJunior college students.
Properly, to our nice shock, among the extra superior groups have began to utilise strategies and applied sciences which might be very near the present state-of-the-art in varied areas, significantly laptop imaginative and prescient and deep studying. A very good instance can be object detectors (normally based mostly on the YOLO structure), which are actually used throughout all three Junior leagues: in OnStage to detect varied props, robots and people who carry out on the stage collectively, in Rescue to detect the victims the robots are rescuing and in Soccer to detect the ball, the objectives, and the opponents. And whereas the members typically used an off-the-shelf implementations, they nonetheless wanted to do all of the steps obligatory for a profitable deployment of this expertise: collect a dataset, finetune the deep-learning mannequin and deploy it on their robots – all of which is way from trivial and may be very near how these applied sciences get utilized in each analysis and trade.
Though now we have seen solely the extra superior groups use deep-learning fashions at RoboCupJunior, we count on that sooner or later we are going to see it grow to be rather more prevalent, particularly because the expertise and the tooling round it turns into extra mature and strong. It does present, nevertheless, that regardless of their age, the RoboCupJunior college students are very near cutting-edge analysis and state-of-the-art applied sciences.
Motion from RoboCupJunior Soccer 2023.
How can folks get entangled in RCJ (both as a participant or an organiser?)
An excellent query!
The perfect place to begin can be the RoboCupJunior web site the place one can discover many attention-grabbing particulars about RoboCupJunior, the respective leagues (similar to Soccer, Rescue and OnStage), and the related regional representatives who organise regional occasions. Getting in contact with a regional consultant is by far the best manner of getting began with RoboCup Junior.
Moreover, I can definitely advocate the RoboCupJunior discussion board, the place many RoboCupJunior members, previous and current, in addition to the organisers, talk about many associated subjects within the open. The group may be very newbie pleasant, so if RoboCupJunior sounds attention-grabbing, don’t hesitate to cease by and say hello!
About Marek Šuppa
Marek stumbled upon AI as a teen when constructing soccer-playing robots and shortly realised he’s not sensible sufficient to do all of the programming by himself. Since then, he’s been determining methods to make machines be taught by themselves, significantly from textual content and pictures. He presently serves because the Principal Information Scientist at Slido (a part of Cisco), bettering the way in which conferences are run world wide. Staying true to his roots, he tries to offer others with an opportunity to have the same expertise by organising the RoboCupJunior competitors as a part of the Government Committee.
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is a non-profit devoted to connecting the AI group to the general public by offering free, high-quality data in AI.
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is Managing Editor for AIhub.