Briefer Rulebook

[PetervDooren]

Is your idea/suggestion related to a problem? Please describe.

Over the past few years the rulebook has gotten quite verbose. More then needed.

Describe the solution you'd like

Check the rulebook for unneeded info and make sure the descriptions are clear but not overly specified.

[PetervDooren]

Suggestions:
for the most part the rulebook is consice. No header contains an insane amount of text. But there are a lot of headers. We might be able to collapse some of these in smaller segments

From what I gather the rulebook should contain a description of a) what the robot needs to do during the tasks. And b) how the robots performance is translated into points. We can make a leaner rulebook by removing anything not directly addressing these topics.

1. Move chapter 2: Concepts behind the competition to its own document. The roadmap as made by the EC. The rulebook is made in the spirit of these concepts but they themselves don’t need to have such a prominent role in the document. The rulebook should keep a link to the new place for the concepts.
2. Similarly we can keep the organizational stuff like qualification and such on the website instead of the rulebook.
3. Remove unenforced rules some rules have been in the rulebook for a few years but have not been used:
   a. 3.2 audience interaction, use of vizbox has not been supported at tournaments.
   b. Big part on 3.5 external devices. rulebook mentions an area for external devices which has not been present past years.
   c. 3.8 Deus ex machina. This provides guidelines for human robot interaction bypassing. But these are enforced in the challenges themselves.
4. Remove duplicate topics. A lot of aspects of the competition are touched on twice in different chapters. Make it so each chapter has a more concrete focus and remove duplicates. prime examples are the many penalties for going against the spirit of the competition.

Granted this last one is easier said than done. I think item 1 and 2 will make the rulebook much more readable. item 3 might prevent some confusion but wont change the bigger picture of the document.

[PetervDooren]

@johaq what do you think of this proposal?

[johaq]

1. I think it is a good idea, but probably an EC decision.

2. Are there RoboCup guidelines that some organizational information needs to included in the Rulebook?

3a. Agreed, can go.
3b. Is used in SSPL
3c. Can probably be shortened significantly

4. Always welcome to make things more concise.

[moriarty]

Yes. I agree there is a lot of information and in the past we have made it shorter but we could do even more by breaking out some of the non-rule related information.

IIRC http://rockinrobotchallenge.eu had the competition documents broken up into 3 smaller documents, one "in a nutshell", one about the competition and one rulebook... which they published individually and then one latex doc that combined all three for convenience.

I think we could do something similar.