The simulation phase serves as a qualification round before the selected teams may use the real robots. Anyone can participate, you don't need to register. However, please sign up to our forum. Make sure to enable notifications or check the forum regularly, since we may make important announcements. It will also serve as a platform for you to ask questions in case anything is not clear.

The goal of the simulation phase is to solve a sequence of manipulation tasks of increasing difficulty (see phase 1 of the protocol for an overview, and the code documentation for details).

At the end of the simulation phase, participants will self-report their score, and they will hand in their code (only Python in simulation phase, on real robots C++ will be allowed in addition). We will verify participants' scores, reporting false scores will be considered scientific misconduct. Instructions on how to set up the simulation, develop your code and prepare your submission can be found here.

In addition, teams will also be required to hand in a 3-page proposal describing the methods they used in the simulation phase and how they intend to solve the real-world tasks, see instructions below.

We will select teams based on a combination of the quality of the proposal and the achieved score.

The submission is due on September 4, instructions where to submit will follow.

The entire submission, including score and proposal, will be treated confidentially.

Instructions for the Proposal

Requirements

The report must be a PDF generated through latex. The documentclass must be article (\documentclass{article}) without any modifications to font size, spacing etc.

• Page 1 must contain only
  • the title,
  • the team name,
  • the names and affiliations of all team members,
  • an email address for contacting the team,
  • and an abstract of no more than 500 characters.
• Page 2 and 3 contain the proposal, describing the methods used in simulation, the methods the team is planning to use on the real system, and why they believe this is a promising approach. Please include also a short section on the ressources your team will be able to commit to his challenge, in particular an estimate of the person-hours.
• Page 4 contains only the references.

Evaluation Criteria

The report will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

1. Clarity and rigor,
2. creativity of the proposed method,
3. how well we expect the team to perform on the real robots, based on the proposed methods and resources.

 

Submission Instructions

Deadline: Friday, September 25th, 11pm Anywhere on Earth (AoE)

To create a submission, please fill in the google form here: https://forms.gle/o1tosFia1WHL44Ej7. Note that you cannot make changes after submission and that you should make only one submission. If you encounter any problems, please contact us on the forum.

Regarding the code and score submission, please follow the instructions here.

For the Proposal, please submit a PDF which is structured as detailed above.