From: Manuela Veloso (Manuela_Veloso@school.coral.cs.cmu.edu)
Date: Fri 02 Mar 2001 - 22:46:24 GMT
Hi all,
It's the beginning of March and RoboCup-2001 is fast approaching.
>From now until August, I will be sending several news articles letting
you know how things are progressing. This is the first of such news
articles. Please feel free to contact me or the your league organizers
with any questions, concerns, or great ideas that you may have. I may
not reply immediately or personally, but I will take everything into
account.
I look very much forward to organizing the RoboCup that you all
have in mind and dream of! :-)
Cheers,
Manuela Veloso
General Chair - RoboCup-2001
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RoboCup-2001 - NEWS Article I - March 2, 2001 - Manuela Veloso
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1. SYMPOSIUM: Remember the paper submission deadline for the RoboCup
International Symposium - it's March 15. Your research and development
contributions are very important and provide the core of RoboCup.
2. WEB PAGE: Check regularly http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~robocup2001. The
page includes information from each league and also organizational
news. New information is posted there all the time.
3. VENUE: RoboCup will take place at the Washington State Convention
and Trade Center in Seattle. We (Tucker Balch, Peter Stone, Raul
Rojas, and I) visited the Convention Center a few weeks ago. Our main
RoboCup competition Hall is similar in space to the one in Melbourne,
slightly larger (3,700m2 and Melbourne was 3,000m2, I believe). There
are two main robotics competitions/exhibits halls side by side, Hall A
and Hall B. AAAI is responsible for Hall A and RoboCup of Hall B.
The RoboCup/AAAI rescue competition and the Humanoid exhibits will be
held in Hall A. All the other competitions will be held in Hall B. We
have a nice room reserved for the Symposium in the Sheraton Hotel -
next door to the convention center. We would like to be able to hold
the Symposium in the convention center. We are working hard to see if
that's possible.
4. SETUP: The construction company seems to be very efficient. I have
been in contact with them since September. They now know much better
what is RoboCup. I have shown them pictures and movies of all the
RoboCup events since 1997. I am confident that they will make a good
job. I will post the complete floor plans when all the details are
sorted out. The layout will be very similar to the one in Melbourne.
However you may need to plan on a more crowded space, as we are
expecting an increase in the number of participating teams.
5. FACILITIES: The convention center is beautiful and has many
facilities, including a coffee shop (Starbucks) and a 24-hour open
copying center (Kinkos).
6. ACCOMODATION: Seattle has many hotels, downtown next to the
convention center, and in the nearby neighborhoods. IJCAI reserved
rooms in several hotels. There are also several blocks of rooms
reserved in the student dorms at the University of Washington.
RoboCup participants will be able to reserve rooms at these facilities
by mentioning that they are with IJCAI. ---------> YOU SHOULD PLAN TO
MAKE YOUR ACCOMODATION ARRANGEMENTS AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE. <-----------
I am expecting that the information will be available by the middle of
March. The RoboCup Web page will also list several other hotels. I
encourage you to search for hotels that are convenient for you.
7. REGISTRATION: Exact registration information will be available by
the middle/end of March. As before, there will be a registration fee
per team, and individual registration fees for the team leader, for
staff members, and for student members. IJCAI and RoboCup
registrations will be separate. However, RoboCup participants who
register also for IJCAI will have a (small) discount in the RoboCup
registration. All the conditions will be stated clearly.
8. TRAVEL SUPPORT: There will be a call for applications for travel
support in May. I am doing my best to raise financial support to be
able to award some travel support to teams. I don't plan that I will
be able to support everyone. I am counting that you are also trying to
raise travel support for your teams next to your own sources of
funding. Please let me know if your institution would like to sponsor
RoboCup-2001 in addition to supporting your own teams.
9. NEW LEAGUES: Remember that Rescue simulation, Rescue robots, and
Humanoids demonstrations are taking place at RoboCup-2001. Rescue is
a great domain that has already shown the potential to be of great
impact in RoboCup. Contact the committee chairs if you are interested
in participating in the new leagues:
- rescue simulation: Satoshi Tadokoro, tadokoro@cs.kobe-u.ac.jp
- rescue robot: Holly Yanco, holly@ai.mit.edu
- humanoids: Dominique Duhaut, dominique.duhaut@univ-ubs.fr
10. AI MAGAZINE: Check the March (Spring) issue of the AI magazine to
see the ad for RoboCup!
And that's all for now! Have fun! Enjoy your research! And remember
Allen Newell's quote: SCIENCE IS IN THE DETAILS! :-) So I am sure that
we can all extract lots of scientific contributions from all our work
getting our teams ready and make a great RoboCup-2001 Symposium!
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