Re: [robocup-rescue-s] Rescue Simulation outlook

From: Cameron Skinner <cam_at_cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2007 16:34:06 +1200

Hi everyone.

Mohammad, you are absolutely correct.

The infrastructure competition was introduced to address some of the
issues you raise, particularly the quality of the simulation. It has
worked well in the past - those of you who competed in 2004 or earlier
will remember the old fire simulator and know how much better the new
one is.

> Please consider the aim of the rescue simulation, to help the people
> in a disaster environment. Can anybody say firmly we can achieve this
> with this system? What are our priorities in the rescue simulation?
> I think we need a good plan for rescue simulation. But the current
> habit in the rescue simulation shows that each year before the Robocup
> competitions some very quick and abrupt changes are made into the
> system. We can observe it in this year even. I don't know why we should have a
> buggy and not-completed Kernel in the competitions also why the teams
> should be a test bed for the new kernel? It
> has so many revealed bugs which mean, it still has some unrevealed
> ones. I urge everybody to think about this sentence: Shouldn't we have
> a plan for developing and promoting the rescue simulation step by
> step, just like 3D Soccer simulation? And how we can reach to this
> plan?

This is a real problem. The TC and OC do the best they can to try and
release new versions early, however the major problem is lack of
resources. As far as I know, only three people have contributed to the
simulators or kernel in the last couple of years and I believe that at
least two of them are not paid to do so.

I totally agree that the kernel must be stable for competition, but
unless people test it this will not be possible. I remember from a
couple of years ago there was a bug in the traffic simulator that caused
a crash. There was a simple workaround, but if the bug had been reported
*before* the competition then it would not have been a problem.

The TC and OC have been attempting to make the development process more
formal with the adoption of the sourceforge website and the wiki at
www.robocuprescue.org. These tools allow anyone to make a contribution.
Unfortunately there seems to be little interest from the rest of the
community.

> Finally remember that it is not the responsibility of TCs to keep
> alive this league we have responsibilities too.

Thank you, Mohammad, for pointing this out. Running this competition is
a large job, even without trying to maintain the software. Without
support from the entire community I think your predictions might come
true, and I think that would be a great loss. We have an opportunity to
make a real difference to the world by producing good research into
disaster management and mitigation. Let's not throw it away.

Cameron Skinner.
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Received on Tue 05 Jun 2007 - 04:33:16 GMT

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