Interview with Marek Šuppa: insights into RoboCupJunior

A RoboCupJunior soccer match in motion.

In July this yr, 2500 contributors congregated in Bordeaux for RoboCup2023. The competitors contains a lot of leagues, and amongst them is RoboCupJunior, which is designed to introduce RoboCup to highschool youngsters, with the main focus being on schooling. There are three sub-leagues: Soccer, Rescue and OnStage.

Marek Šuppa serves on the Government Committee for RoboCupJunior, and he advised us concerning the competitors this yr and the most recent 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 crew didn’t do all that effectively 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 liable for the organisation of RoboCupJunior as an entire.

How was the occasion this yr? What had been a few of the highlights?

I assume this yr’s theme or slogan, if we had been to offer it one, could be “again to regular”, or one thing like that. Though RoboCup 2022 already came about in-person in Thailand final yr after two years of a pandemic pause, it was in a moderately restricted capability, as COVID-19 nonetheless affected fairly a number of areas. It was nice to see that the RoboCup group 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 could even be tough to do that query justice with out thanking the native French organisers. They had been really able to organise the occasion in 2020 nevertheless it acquired cancelled resulting from COVID-19. However they didn’t hand over 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 discuss 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 goals: 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 carefully associated to the RoboCup “Main” challenges, that are tackled by college college students and their mentors. We’re therefore constantly making an attempt to each make it extra compelling and charming for the scholars and on the similar 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, by which 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 and so they compete on a subject that’s six instances bigger than the “normal” fields which are used for the person video games. Whereas within the particular person matches every crew 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 subject throughout a SuperTeam match. The setup is similar to the Division B of the Small Measurement League of RoboCup “Main”.

The SuperTeam video games have existed in RoboCupJunior Soccer since 2013, so for fairly some time, and the suggestions we acquired on them was overwhelmingly constructive: it was a number of enjoyable for each the contributors in addition to the spectators. However in comparison with the Small Measurement League video games there have been nonetheless two noticeable variations: the robots didn’t have a method of speaking with each other and moreover, the referees didn’t have a method of speaking with the robots. The end result 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 sphere to catch them and do a kickoff after a aim was scored. Though hilarious, it’s removed from how we’d think about the SuperTeam video games to look.

The RoboCupJunior Soccer Commonplace Communication Modules intention to do each. The module itself is a small system that’s hooked up to every robotic on the SuperTeam subject. These units are all related through Bluetooth to a single smartphone, by which the referee can ship instructions to all robots on the sphere. The units themselves additionally assist direct message alternate between robots on a single SuperTeam, that means the groups should not have to speculate into determining talk with the opposite robots however could make use of a standard platform. The units, in addition to their firmware, are open supply, that means not solely that everybody can construct their very own Commonplace Communication Module in the event that they’d like but additionally that the group can take part in its improvement, 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” prior to now and had some empirical proof that it ought to work moderately effectively, this was the primary time we tried it in an actual competitors.

All in all, I’d say that it was a really constructive experiment. The modules themselves did work fairly effectively and for a few of us, who occurred to have expertise with “robotic chasing” talked about above, it was type of a magical feeling to see the robots cease proper on the principle referee’s whistle.

We additionally discovered potential areas for enchancment sooner or later. The modules themselves should not have an influence supply of their very own and had been powered by the robots themselves. We didn’t assume this is able to 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 – as an example when the robotic decides to aggressively speed up – which in flip means a few of the modules disconnect when the voltage is lowered considerably. Nonetheless, it ended up being a pleasant lesson for everybody concerned, one which we are able to actually be taught from once we design the following iterations.

The livestream from Day 4 of RoboCupJunior Soccer 2023. This stream contains the SuperTeam finals and the technical challenges. You can even 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 in recent times 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, pc science, and engineering basically – with a few of us additionally doing analysis in synthetic intelligence and machine studying. And whereas we all the time thought that it might 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 the vast majority of RoboCupJunior college students.

Nicely, to our nice shock, a few of 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, significantly pc imaginative and prescient and deep studying. An excellent instance could be object detectors (normally based mostly on the YOLO structure), which at the moment are 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 contributors usually 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 could be very near how these applied sciences get utilized in each analysis and trade.

Though we’ve got 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 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 become involved in RCJ (both as a participant or an organiser?)

An excellent query!

The very best place to start out could be the RoboCupJunior web site the place one can discover many fascinating particulars about RoboCupJunior, the respective leagues (resembling 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 method of getting began with RoboCup Junior.

Moreover, I can actually suggest the RoboCupJunior discussion board, the place many RoboCupJunior contributors, previous and current, in addition to the organisers, focus on many associated subjects within the open. The group 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 a teen 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 be taught by themselves, significantly from textual content and pictures. He at present serves because the Principal Information Scientist at Slido (a part of Cisco), enhancing the way in which conferences are run all over the world. Staying true to his roots, he tries to supply others with an opportunity to have an analogous expertise by organising the RoboCupJunior competitors as a part of the Government Committee.