RoboCup 2025 – Qualification

Important Dates

  • Team Qualification Material Submission Deadline: February 11, 2025
  • TDP Peer Review Deadline: March 4, 2025
  • Preliminary Team Qualification Results Announcement: March 18, 2025
  • Final TDP Submission Deadline: April 1, 2025
  • Final Team Qualification Results Announcement: April 15, 2025
  • Early Registration: TBD
  • Regular Registration: TBD
  • Late Registration: TBD
  • Technical Challenges Sign Up Deadline: July 15, 2025
  • Open Source Submission Deadline: July 15, 2025
  • Team Setup: July 15 – 16, 2025
  • Competitions: July 17 – 20, 2025
  • Symposium: July 21, 2025

* All deadlines are by the end of the day at any place on Earth

 
 

Qualification Criteria

Every team interested to participate must complete the following
actions until the Team Qualification Material Submission Deadline, which
is specified at the beginning of the page:

  • Submit a Team Description Paper (see instructions below).
  • Submit a Team Video.
  • Submit by e-mail to the organizing committee your intent to participate in RoboCup. The e-mail subject should be: 2025 Participation Intent <Your Team Name>. Please also include:
    • Team Name
    • Country
    • University
    • Main contact name and email
    • Website (if you have one)
    • Preferred Division (A or B) (More Information)
    • Short rationale for the preferred division

Please pay attention to the following points:

  • Communication will be made via e-mail, using the RoboCup Small Size League mailing list. Pay attention to these e-mails and answer the OC’s questions. A team that does not reply risks losing its qualified place.
  • We understand that new teams may struggle meeting all of the
    qualification criteria below. We encourage new teams to submit
    qualification video material demonstrating their true current
    capabilities, while stating in their Team Description Paper (TDP) what
    is expected to be completed by competition, teams not meeting minimum
    required criteria will be considered for inclusion only after all teams
    submitting compliant qualification materials.
  • The SSL will be divided into two divisions with separate
    tournaments: Division A and division B. Division A is aimed at advanced
    teams whereas new and/or less competitive teams can play in division B.
    Each team will only play in one of those two divisions. The OC will have
    the final word. We are aiming at around 12 teams per division.
  • Since 2018, it is explicitly allowed to attend as a joint team. Such
    team will attend as one team and must submit all qualification
    materials once. It is allowed to use multiple systems, such as multiple
    computers.

Team Description Paper

As part of the qualification procedure, every team must submit a Team
Description Paper (TDP) or an Extended Team Description Paper (ETDP). All teams intending to participate in Division A must submit an ETDP.
Every TDP and ETDP will be reviewed by a panel of peers. Teams that
present substandard TDPs and ETDPs will not qualify for the RoboCup
tournament.

TDP and ETDP Guidelines

All TDPs and ETDPs must follow these guidelines:

  • The TDP must contain a brief description of the team, with citations to previous TDPs and the team’s website where appropriate.
  • The TDP must focus on innovations that the team has produced with
    respect to their previous TDPs. These innovations must be described in
    detail, to facilitate reproducibility for other teams, where possible.
  • The TDP must have a clear structure and it must be written in clear English.
  • The TDP must be formatted according to the Springer LNCS format, as the symposium submissions. Contrary to the requirements in the linked document the (E)TDP should also include page numbers.
  • The TDP must be at least 6 and at most 16 pages long. This does not include references.

In addition to the above requirements, ETDPs should follow these guidelines:

  • The ETDP must describe in detail the aspects of the team’s system which most contribute to its success.
  • To maximize the effectiveness of ETDPs, every division A team must
    bring along a poster that illustrates the content of the paper. The
    poster must have a size of roughly one square meter (A0) and will be
    hung up in the RoboCup venue.

Submission Information

Like last year we have set up a conference management system to handle the peer review process. It is accessible via this link: TBD

Each team will have to register, or log in with an already existing
account, and upload their qualification materials to the site. To create
an account, click on ‘Register’, next to the ‘New to CMT?’ text. To
submit a paper, click on the top-left button ‘Create a new submission’.

Qualification Process

After the Team Qualification Material Submission Deadline, the OC will reach out by email to all teams that submitted the three required materials for qualification (video, participation intent, (E)TDP). This starts the single-blind peer-review phase: Each team is assigned three (E)TDPs and is tasked to review them, answer basic questions about the submissions and share concerns and ideas for improvement with the team and/or the TC/OC.

To keep the review single-blind, please try to avoid self-identifying yourself or your team in the comments or shared media. The single-blind review is important to us because it allows reviewers to share their concerns or criticize the submission without fear for retaliation.
Failure to meaningfully review the submissions can result in disqualification of your team!

After the TDP Peer Review Deadline but on or before the Preliminary Team Qualification Results Announcement, TC/OC will contact each team (again, by email) to announce to them one of the following four Preliminary Qualification Status:

  1. Qualified: If the video and the (E)TDP are of sufficient quality, a team is directly qualified for the RoboCup. They are still encouraged to improve their (E)TDP by incorporating relevant feedback, but this isn’t required to participate. Teams can (in extreme cases) lose their qualified status – by prolonged failure to reply to OCs emails that are crucial for running the competition. Qualified teams can withdraw for any reason from the competition by announcing their withdrawal to the OC. Teams are encouraged to announce their withdrawal as soon as they know to allow for teams to move up from the waiting list (and to allow for a smooth organization).
  2. On the waiting list: We have to limit the number of participants for the RoboCup. If the number of applicants is higher than our capacity, we give out slots based on initial qualification material quality (with a higher significance on (E)TDP quality), and a few slots are given out by chance. Teams who have otherwise qualified, but who haven’t managed to get a slot are on the waiting list. In their email announcing this to the team, TC/OC includes the current position on the waiting list (ranked by qualification material quality). If a qualified team withdraws, TC/OC will go through the waiting list in order and search for a replacement team. Keep an eye on your emails! If you are on the waiting list and want to withdraw, please also announce that to the OC to speed up the process.
  3. Conditionally Qualified: If the video and/or the (E)TDP have major flaws, teams are usually conditionally qualified. In their email announcing this decision, TC/OC gives a list of conditions the team has to meet by the Final TDP Submission Deadline to be allowed to compete in the RoboCup. Failure to do so will result in disqualification.
  4. Not qualified: In extremely rare cases (with a unanimous vote in TC/OC) a bad (E)TDP submission can result in the team being not qualified, without a second chance to improve their submission. This is only for extreme cases, and reflects that conditional qualification is a huge drain on scarce resources: While your initial (E)TDP was reviewed by three of your peers, checking your updated (E)TDP after a conditional qualification has to be done by TC/OC members. Initially submitting a (E)TDP that clearly isn’t even close to be acceptable for qualification and planning on writing a decent one only for the final (E)TDP Submission Deadline is disrespectful towards your peers who had to waste time on a review you are not interested in, and is requiring the TC/OC to do a full review of your submission themselves.

TDP Examples

The Organizing Committee has selected a few (E)TDPs as good examples.

TIGERs Mannheim Extended Team Description for RoboCup 2020
– This paper gives a very detailed explanation of the hardware
improvements made to the team. It gives a clear explanation and also the
reasoning for these changes, providing valuable information for other
teams. The paper is also not excessively long, making it easier for
reviewers to read it. It also has no (self-)plagiarism.

ER-Force 2020 Extended Team Description Paper
– This paper goes in depth regarding the team’s new path planning
system. The paper does not mention hardware as there were no significant
changes in that area, and mentioning them would only mean having
duplicate information. The paper is also not
excessively long.

ZJUNlict Extended Team Description Paper for Robocup 2020
– This paper discusses the changes done in every area of the robot, the
mechanical changes, the electronic changes and the software ones. It is
a bit longer than what has been requested this year but it covers each
topic well and it has no (self-)plagiarism.

Team Video

Your team video must contain at least 1 minute of unedited continuous footage of game time.
As game time is stopped during STOP or HALT, this could be
significantly more than one minute of wall time of unedited footage. The
qualification video has to be recent, i.e. not more than 2 years old.
If the OC feels like your video is too old, the OC might ask teams to
prove that their video demonstrates their current capabilities. If your
video is longer than 5 minutes, for example a full recording of a match,
teams have to provide timestamps of the respective sections (see
listing below). The qualification video can be either of the following
types, although preference will be given to item 1 (then 2 and last 3):

  1. A video of your robots participating in a RoboCup standard game
    (i.e. a game at RoboCup or one of the local regional competitions). The
    video should show obstacle avoidance, shooting and passing skill. For
    participating in Division A, teams also have to show their ball
    placement.
  2. A video of your robots (there must be at least two moving robots) engaging in two or more of the following activities:
    • One or more robots competing against an active robot goalkeeper.
    • Two or more robot field players actively going to the ball and playing against one another.
    • At least two robots playing cooperatively against 5 static or moving obstacles.
  3. A video showing one or more robots partially demonstrating capabilities listed in item 2.

The team video is used by the OC to determine the readiness of a team
to compete effectively and is part of the criteria in ranking teams in
the qualification process. Teams are advised to submit a video that best demonstrates the readiness of the team to compete in an international competition.

Submission Information

To submit the video footage, you must send an e-mail to the RoboCup Small Size League mailing list and CC it also to the organizing committee. The e-mail should contain the following information:

  • Subject: 2025 Qualification Video <Your Team Name>.
  • The URL of your video. Your Video must be either playable in a
    modern browser upon opening that webpage, or downloadable via HTTPS.

Please pay attention to the following:

  • Please submit a single video file.
  • The video must be stored on your own server or a reliable online video hosting service.
  • Do NOT send the video as an attachment to the mailing list nor to the organization committee!