Interview with Marek Šuppa: insights into RoboCupJunior

A RoboCupJunior soccer match in motion.

In July this yr, 2500 members congregated in Bordeaux for RoboCup2023. The competitors includes a variety of 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 Govt Committee for RoboCupJunior, and he advised us concerning 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 staff 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 answerable for the organisation of RoboCupJunior as a complete.

How was the occasion this yr? What had been among the highlights?

I assume this yr’s theme or slogan, if we had been to provide it one, can be “again to regular”, or one thing like that. Though RoboCup 2022 already passed off in-person in Thailand final yr after two years of a pandemic pause, it was in a relatively restricted capability, as COVID-19 nonetheless affected fairly a number of areas. It was nice to see that the RoboCup neighborhood was capable of 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 will even be troublesome to do that query justice with out thanking the native French organisers. They had been truly able to organise the occasion in 2020 but it surely acquired cancelled as a consequence of COVID-19. However they didn’t quit on the thought 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, might you speak concerning 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, fascinating and related for (principally) highschool college students and on the similar 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 making an attempt to each make it extra compelling and fascinating for the scholars and on the similar time guarantee it’s technical sufficient to assist them develop in the 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 international locations type a so-called “SuperTeam” and compete towards one other “SuperTeam” as if these had been distinct groups. In RoboCupJunior Soccer the “SuperTeams” are composed of 4 to 5 groups they usually compete on a area that’s six occasions bigger than the “customary” fields which are used for the person video games. Whereas within the particular person matches every staff can play with two robots at most (leading to a 2v2 recreation) in a SuperTeam match every SuperTeam fields 5 robots, that means there are 10 robots that play on the SuperTeam area 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 number 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, at any time when 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 objective was scored. Though hilarious, it’s removed from how we’d think about the SuperTeam video games to look.

The RoboCupJunior Soccer Normal Communication Modules intention to do each. The module itself is a small machine that’s hooked up to every robotic on the SuperTeam area. These gadgets are all related through Bluetooth to a single smartphone, by which the referee can ship instructions to all robots on the sector. The gadgets themselves additionally assist direct message change between robots on a single SuperTeam, that means the groups wouldn’t have to speculate into determining learn how to talk with the opposite robots however could make use of a typical platform. The gadgets, in addition to their firmware, are open supply, that means not solely that everybody can construct their very own Normal Communication Module in the event that they’d like but additionally that the neighborhood can take part in its growth, which makes it an fascinating 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 massive 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 relatively properly, this was the primary time we tried it in an actual competitors.

All in all, I’d 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 primary referee’s whistle.

We additionally discovered potential areas for enchancment sooner or later. The modules themselves wouldn’t have an influence supply of their very own and had been powered by the robots themselves. We didn’t assume this could 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. Nevertheless, it ended up being a pleasant lesson for everybody concerned, one which we will actually study 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 may also view the livestream of the semifinals and finals from day three right here.

May you inform us concerning the emergence of deep-learning fashions within the RoboCupJunior leagues?

That is one thing we began to watch lately which shocked us organisers, to some extent. In our day-to-day jobs (that’s, when we aren’t organising RoboCup), many people, the organisers, work in areas associated to robotics, pc science, and engineering usually – with a few of us additionally doing analysis in synthetic intelligence and machine studying. And whereas we at all times thought that it could be nice to see extra of the cutting-edge analysis being utilized at RoboCupJunior, we at all times dismissed it as one thing too superior and/or troublesome to arrange for the highschool college students that comprise the vast majority of RoboCupJunior college students.

Properly, to our nice shock, among the extra superior groups have began to utilise strategies and applied sciences which are very near the present state-of-the-art in numerous areas, notably pc imaginative and prescient and deep studying. A great instance can be object detectors (often based mostly on the YOLO structure), which are actually used throughout all three Junior leagues: in OnStage to detect numerous 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 essential 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 could be very near how these applied sciences get utilized in each analysis and trade.

Though we now have seen solely the extra superior groups use deep-learning fashions at RoboCupJunior, we anticipate that sooner or later we’ll see it change into far more prevalent, particularly because the expertise and the tooling round it turns into extra mature and sturdy. It does present, nonetheless, 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 start out can be the RoboCupJunior web site the place one can discover many fascinating particulars about RoboCupJunior, the respective leagues (equivalent 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 actually advocate the RoboCupJunior discussion board, the place many RoboCupJunior members, previous and current, in addition to the organisers, focus on many associated subjects within the open. The neighborhood could be very newbie pleasant, so if RoboCupJunior sounds fascinating, don’t hesitate to cease by and say hello!

About Marek Šuppa

Marek stumbled upon AI as an adolescent when constructing soccer-playing robots and rapidly realised he isn’t sensible sufficient to do all of the programming by himself. Since then, he’s been determining methods to make machines study by themselves, notably from textual content and pictures. He at the moment serves because the Principal Information Scientist at Slido (a part of Cisco), bettering the best way conferences are run around the globe. Staying true to his roots, he tries to offer others with an opportunity to have an identical expertise by organising the RoboCupJunior competitors as a part of the Govt Committee.