Introduction

This is a guideline document for the RoboCup Junior Rescue League – inspired by various practices popular among the community. If you feel like contributing, please do so! Fork the project and open a pull request.

This document focuses on the field judges. See special guidelines for interviewers.

General guidelines for Line and Maze

1. Be kind to the teams. Treat them well. Don't be upset even if a team is upset. Be calm and explain things if needed.

2. Be fair. If you have done a mistake tell the main judge immediately. She/he may decide to continue with this mistake during the tournament to have a fair competition for everyone.

3. If unsure about anything, ask the main judge. If she/he is also unsure, judge in favor for the team. But be consistent with all previous decisions during the tournament.

4. No practise on the competition fields – never during the tournament.

5. Try to not influence the team, even if you want to help them to understand the rules – it is their task, not yours. The problem is teams may get different help from different judges. You should never have a favorite team, treat every team the same. For example never tell the team that "it is good to place a checkpoint marker on tiles with several passes of strategical reasons (see point 4 in line below)". It should be the team that thinks about these kind of decisions.

6. The robot is defined as "all parts still fixed to the robot, including but not limited to cables, ropes and textile". Nuts and bolts that the robot has lost during the run is not considered the robot. However they are not allowed to remount such parts.

(Recursive definition when it refers to the term robot itself???)

7. The team is not allowed to modify or repair a robot after the scoring run has started. If the robot loses anything the parts will remain in the field until the run is over. Neither you nor the team is allowed to move lost parts.

8. It is never okay to share any information* about the field with the robot. Information sharing can happen in several ways, for example but not limited to: Buttons, gyro-sensors sensing rotation of the robot in the air, distance sensors sensing the wall configuration (and team placing the robot in a certain way to tell the robot something), light sensors that the team cover in a certain configuration during a LoP. Look for this and tell the main judge as soon as you suspect anything. Don't tell the team because we don't want fair teams to feel guilty, and we don't want cheating teams to be more careful of what they do.

Notes for Rescue Line Judges:

* Information that is OK to tell the robot beforehand: the inclination of the ramp, the width of the line, the color values of intersection markers.

Information that is NOT OK to tell the robot: the location or size of the obstacles, the placement of the evacuation point, if it is better to go right or left around obstacles, the number of checkpoint markers, etc. Short: everything that can vary between different runs.

1. "Reached checkpoint" is defined as "more than half of the robot is within the tile marked with a checkpoint marker, when seen from above. ".

(What if the robot is growing larger than 2 tiles, then the robot will never be more than half inside any single tile??) ((Then the robot would not fit through the doorway and would therefore have other (more important) problems...))

2. During a LoP the team is not allowed to modify / repair / change the robot in any way. For example, but not limited to: fastening wheels or bolts, manually rotating wheels, pushing buttons (except restart procedure), changing the equipment for victim rescuing (like manually elevating an arm).

3. In case of a LoP the robot should restart on the last visited checkpoint tile. No part of the robot is allowed to protrude from the checkpoint tile when seen from above. The direction of the robot should be in the direction of the path toward the evacuation zone (this is to prevent teams from giving the robot information about the field).

4. If the checkpoint tile is located on a tile with the line passing several times, the team can use it as a recovery point every time the robot passes the checkpoint.

5. The team needs to explicitly place a checkpoint marker before the evacuation zone to be able to restart there after a LoP in the evacuation zone.

6. The team should select the location of the checkpoint markers. The team places the checkpoint markers in the field (but they need to be within just one single tile when looking from above). Each field design has a predesignated number of checkpoint markers. All markers have to be used.

7. The placement of the checkpoint markers (and to calibrate the robot) should be done within the 8 minutes for the run.

8. The victims should be dropped from the center of the evacuation zone and they should roll to their positions by themselves. You as a judge should never touch the victims and push them to new locations after they are dropped (since people may think that you are helping the running team or making it harder for the specific team).

9. The placement of the evacuation point will be done using a dice. For example with three corners: 1&2 is corner 1, 3&4 is corner 2, 5&6 is corner 3. You can decide the numbering of the corners as long as you are consistent between runs.

10. The evacuation point can be moved manually if you suspect the team is cheating. For example if the robot is going straight towards the correct corner every try in the evacuation zone you can move the evacuation point to another corner even without using the dice. Please inform the main judge as soon as possible if you have done this for a team.

11. The team is not allowed to move to the next droptile before they have done 3 attempts. But there is nothing that requires the team to do 3 complete attempts, if they just place their robot on the field, start it and then call LoP it is still counted as an attempt.

12. There is nothing that prevents a team from trying more than 3 times. The team will never get negative score from trying, but the only thing that the team can earn is the scoring for the obstacles, gaps, speedbumps and intersections between the two checkpoints, the passing itself will yield 0 points.

Notes for Rescue Maze Judges:

* Information that is OK to tell the robot beforehand: the width of the passages, the height of the walls, the temperature range of the victims, such information that is static and the same in every run during the tournament.

Information that is NOT OK to tell the robot: the location of victims, walls, checkpoints, blacktiles, if it is favorable to follow the right or left wall in this particular maze, etc. Short: everything that can vary between different runs.

1. The definition of visited is "when more than half of the robot is within the tile, when looking from above".

2. To get the points for the ramp the robot needs to be able to leave the tile below the ramp by itself. I.e. if the robot rolls down the ramp and flips so it can't move from the tile it will not earn the points for the ramp. However if the tile below the ramp is a checkpoint and more than half of the robot is within that tile it can restart there even if it has flipped over (but still not get the score for the ramp when exiting the tile after the LoP).

3. To identify a victim the robot needs to stop and flash a light source on and off for 5 seconds OR drop a rescue kit. Both needs to be done within 15 cm proximity of the victim.

4. The proximity distance for rescue kits is counted where it first touches the ground. No matter what happens later.

5. The robot is only allowed to carry 12 rescue kits. Check this before start!

6. The robot is allowed to drop more rescue kits but can only score once per victim. A harmed victim will yield more points if the robot drops 2 kits (one kit still counts as identification).

7. If the robot has visited a black tile, it needs to go straight backwards – if the robot turns it will be a LoP!

8. Score for speedbumps in a tile will be given regardless if the robot has actual passed the speedbump or not. It will be enough if the robot has visited the square and subsequently left it (on its own, it is not counted as passed speedbump if the team call LoP in the tile and lifts the robot away).

9. After a LoP the robot should be placed on the last visited checkpoint. The robot should be completely within the tile when looking from above. It can be turned in any direction – but keep an eye for suspicious behaviour here!

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Credits

Fredrik Lofgren / @FredrikLofgren / http://fredriklofgren.se Jennifer Krieger / mail@jenniferkrieger.de