RoboCup Small Size Referee Box

Announcements:

NEW!!! The new refbox 2005 release is now available. Changes are listed below but include the ability to send force starts any time, and renaming of some buttons. No protocol changes occured.
The new refbox release has a GTKMM-based gui which is much prettier...
The new code includes a client class to make transitioning to the new system easier for you

Developers:

The current developers are. Want to be a developer? You must have competed at a RoboCup competition before (sorry, but it makes sense if you think about it), and must send email to Brett

The referee box is aimed pushing the small size league towards full autonomy with little physical human contact with the robots. The referee box, which has been long talked about in the small size league, is a PC program designed to provide a GUI interface to the assistant referee and serial commands to the two competing teams. The referee box will keep a record of the timeouts, time remaining, score and penalties.

This section describes the referee box operation at a general level. For more specific operations see the following section, or the rules, or the rules FAQ.

The operation of the referee box is as follows:

The assistant referee runs the referee box (a laptop with split serial cables) and the referee just does his/her usual thing. The referee box *only* comes in to play during restarts and stoppages. When a game is running the assistant referee does nothing. The only exception to this is when halftime and full time occur. I'll describe this scenario later.

All restarts occur as follows:

NEW!!!!The start command is now called 'force start' and stop is called 'stop game'. The force start command can be run any time the game is running.
The game is currently stopped (or has not yet started)
The referee calls out what the restart is. The options are kickoff, penalty, free-kick or neutral. The first three have the second option of being for the yellow team or the blue.
The assistant referee selects the radio button corresponding to the restart type. The referee box sends the correspondign command out the serial port
The referee waits until everyone is ready, then blows the whistle
The assistant referee, as close as practical to the whistle blow, presses the start button. This causes the start command to be sent out the serial ports and the robots start moving

Now ideally, we don't need to touch the robots except to remove them from the field. We should be able to control everything via the GUI and keyboard during the stoppage in play. For RoboCup 2002, humans will be allowed to reach onto the field to move the robots into position as per usual

When step 3 occurs, your team may ignore or process the command as you so choose. There will be an arbitrary delay (ie while peopel move their robots), then the referee will say something like "hands off", and steps 4 and 5 occur. If you look at the software you will see that it is pretty obvious to run.

The referee box keeps track of the game time and timeouts. Now the timeout/game time situations are as follows:

When a game timer is up, the referee box will inform the assistant referee, who in turn informs the referee
The referee will then blow his/her whistle or inform the team their timeout is up as appropriate for the situation

And that is all there is to it!

Rules:

The latest version of the rules are located. For any queries about the rules, you should email the smallsize mailing list.

Rules for RoboCup 2003
A Rules FAQ is also available.

Client Class:

We have now added a client class (referee/client/game_state.h) to help you transition to using the new referee box. This is included with the latest release.

Protocol:

NOTE The protocol has changed slightly. Please pay careful attention to the changes below.

The protocol consists of single ASCII characters sent at 9600 baud (a faster rate may be chosen for the next release), with no parity, 8 data bits and no flow control. The actual commands that are currently implemented are listed below: *NB* New changes listed in bold

Command type	Command Description	Yellow Team Command	Blue Team Command
Control commands
	Halt	H
	Stop	S
	Ready	' '
	Start	s
Game Notifications
	Begin first half	1
	Begin half time	h
	Begin second half	2
	Begin overtime half 1	o
	Begin overtime half 2	O
	Begin penalty shootout	a
Game restarts
	Kick off	k	K
	Penalty	p	P
	Direct Free kick	f	F
	Indirect Free kick	i	I
Extras
	Timeout	t	T
	Timeout end	z	z
	Goal scored	g	G
	decrease Goal score	d	D
	Yellow Card	y	Y
	Red Card	r	R
	Cancel	c

All comments and suggestions are more than welcome. Please send them to comments.

Source Code:

The latest code can be found here at:

ROBOCUP 2005 code click here

Help

For any help regarding the operation/function of the referee box please email the smallsize mailing list Smallsize mailing list