1. Upcoming Due Dates!

- All participants of the tournament are requested to submit and present a paper on their robots and schems. Those with research interests in the fields of multi-agent cooperation, artificial life and robotics, autonomous micro-robots, intelligent control, etc. are also requested to submit papers for the workshop. Please send an abstract of 800-1000 words to the MIROSOT'96 Secretariat at mirosot@vivaldi.kaist.ac.kr no later than May 31, 1996.

- Authors will be informed of the acceptance of their papers by July 115, 1996.

- Submission of camera-ready manuscript will be required by Sept. 15, 1996.


2. Domestic Micro-Robot Soccer Tournament held on May 9-10, 1996

Domestic micro-robot soccer tournament was held at KAIST on May 9-10, 1996. The nine teams participated in the tournament. The game was held in the main auditorium of the KAIST. Many people visited to watch the interesting game through the multi-vision. In the final game, "Mecharo"defeated "KingGo" by 4:2 and won the first winner prize. The "Mecharo" team was made by the Machine Control Lab. (Prof. J.H. Oh) of the Mechanical Engineering Dept., KAIST. Because of the communication problem, only two teams could participate in the competition.


3. Wrap-up Meeting of the Domestic Tournament

After domestic tournament, all team members had a meeting on May 14, 1996. Together with Prof. Jong-Hwan Kim, organizing committee chair of MIROSOT'96, all participants discussed about some problems happened durign KAIST micro-robot soccer game and prepared counterplans.
The problems and suggestions discussed in the meeting are as follows:

3.1 Frequency allocation problem

* Problems: Some I/R sensors had problems because of the noise of the mercury lamp in main hall of the auditorium.

* Suggestions:
- R/F modules are encouraged for the communication between a host computer and robots.
- The research group for the R/F module development, consisting of members from each team who use R/F module, should be organized for the international event in November.
- For those teams who are interested in the I/R module, the research group for the I/R module development should also be organized.
- The group members should cowork for the development of the prototype of the R/F or I/R modules. And this prototype shall be distrubuted to the participating teams.
The standard official frequency channels will be decided and announced later.
- If one team decides to use his own R/F or I/R module instead of using standard oficial frequency channels, he must avoid frequency channels other than the standard channel.
- All these regulations on frequency allocation should be announced promptly through e-mail or WWW.

3.2 Ground size and ball

* Problems: Ground size seems to be a bit small for 5 robots per team to play. The golf ball should have some more frictions so that it does not more randomly.
* Suggestions:
- In the international MIROSOT'96, we will not change the ground size and the ball, and after the event, some changes can be made receiving feedbacks from each team.

3.3 Uniforms

* Suggestions:
- The uniforms will be used in the following games.
The shape, size, and color of the uniform will be chosen after some discussions among the participating teams.

3.4 Vision data sharing

* Suggestions:
- The research group for the vision system development should be organized.
- Vision data (position) after the image processing will be available for the teams who would like to use that vision information. Each team will be provided the position data through the ready-made vision system by the research group.
- The detailed specification of the vision system/data will be announced before long to those who would like to share the vision system together with Korean teams.
- Participating teams are strongly encouraged to develop their own vision system.

3.5 Tournament site

Tournament site is the same as before (main hall of the auditorium in KAIST).

3.6 International Joint Team (I.J.T.)

* Suggestions:
- The detailed hardware specification of each domestic team will be announced through e-mail or web-site soon (tentatively see the following article 3).
- An I.J.T. will be formed by a domestic team and a foreign teams.
- Each team can contact with each other with the guide of the mirosot organizing committee.

3.7 Regular micro-robot soccer games for practice

The first one will be held on the 19th of July among Korean teams as practicing games.

3.8 Opinion exchanges via BBS

Exchanging opinions/ideas of each team via BBS of the MIROSOT home page is strongly encouraged: www.mirosot.org.


4. Spec. of Micro-Robot for I.J.T

There are two ways to participate in the tournament: One is with their own team and the other is along with the international joint team (IJT) with KAIST teams. For those who would like to participate as an IJT: Robot systems (hardware) will be provided to the teams by KAIST. The participating members must develop and bring their software (strategies for soccer) for the IJT. For the IJTs, a summer camp will be held in the KAIST campus during mid-August, 1996 (tentative).

The living expenses for the teams will be provided by the MIROSOT committee. The teams must bear their own travel expenses.

The foreign teams are encouraged to contact with the secretariat via email for the matching process with the domestic teams they are interested in. The specifications of robot systems provided by KAIST are below. It should be noted that some teams still have communication problem. They have been trying to solve the problem until July 18, 1996.

1. MIRO Team and SOTY Team

1.1 CPU

(1) MAIN CHIP: iNTEL 80C196KC (20MHz)
(2) board
- 32KB ROM, 32KB RAM
- 3 PWM outputs
- 3 16bit encode counter
- 8 A/D converter
- 82c55 PPK
- link adapter

1.2 Sensor

- Side: 8 pairs of IR sensors
- Botto: 8 IR sensors
-Embed motor encoder of 0.4689 mm resolution

1.3 Moter

2 minimotors
- Motor drive chip: 2 Telcom TC1428
- Gear Box: two 1:35 gears
- Encoder: 136z pulses/wheel
- Maximum Velocity: 50 cm/sec





5. Interesting concurrent event - SEAL'96

The First Asia-Pacific Conference on "Simulated Evolution And Learning", SEAL'96, will be held in conjunction with MIROSOT'96 during the same period (Nov. 9-12, 1996).

There will be no parallel sessions between the two so that all participants of the conference can watch the World Cup Soccer Tournament played by various robots!

The conference is concerned with the following areas"

* Evolutionary Learning
* Hybrid Learning
* Adaptive Systems
* Evolutionary Economics and Games
* Applications of Evolutionary and Hybrid Learning Systems.

Please refer to "http://vivaldi.kaist.ac.kr/~seal'96" for further information.