This initiative focuses on promoting the use of Artificial Intelligence to support teamwork coordination and decision-making of ground rescue teams in a post-disaster urban setting. It maintains a computer simulation platform that can realistically represent natural disaster scenarios where Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) plans can be assessed. This platform is a comprehensive artificial simulation environment that can be used as a testbed to the effectiveness of coordination strategies of USAR teams, coalition formations of heterogeneous teams, rescue plans to explore large-scale environments with a limited set of resources to search for survivors, disaster response public policies, among others.

The RoboCup Rescue Agent Simulation Competition involves primarily evaluating the performance of teams of agents in regards to their distributed coordination and planning algorithms for rescuing civilians in a city after an earthquake. The goal is evaluating the effectiveness of Ambulance Team, Police Force, and Fire Brigade agents on rescuing civilians in earthquake scenarios. Here are some of the challenges that can be tackled in this competition:

- Decision Making Algorithms
- Task Allocation Methods
- Multi-Agent Coordination and Team Formation Methods
- Path Finding
- Search Algorithms

**WAIVER OF THE TEAM FEE FOR NEW TEAMS**
The RoboCup Federation is pleased to introduce a waiver of the team fee for the 2022 international RoboCup competition for NEW teams in the major leagues. A NEW team is defined as a team all of whose team members have never participated in an annual international RoboCup competition. The waiver concerns only the team fee and does not imply any waiver of fees for team members.


**GETTING STARTED GUIDE**
Here are some pointers to get started with the agents' development

ADF Java:
- Repository: roborescue/adf-sample-agent-java: RoboCup Rescue Agent Development Framework Sample Agent Java (github.com)
- Documentation: Java ADF manual

[NEW] Python:
- Repository: roborescue/rcrs-sample-agent-python (github.com)

[NEW] Docker:
- Repository: roborescue/rcrs-docker (github.com)
Using docker is optional for teams that wish to have an environment that is already set up for development


**PRE-REGISTRATION**
Teams must register via the submission system available at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rcrs2022 no later than February 15, 2022 (23:55 UTC). This pre-registration requires only teams to fill the “Title” field and the name, institution, and contact information of all team members. The “Title” field should be “Agent_[TeamName]” to participate in the Agent Competition and “Infrastructure_[TeamName]” for the infrastructure competition, where [TeamName] should be replaced by the name of the team. The pre-registration does not imply that the team will be evaluated to participate in the competition, please see section QUALIFICATION below for further information.

**QUALIFICATION**
Teams must submit a Team Description Paper (TDP) (in English) describing the strategy and recent advancements implemented in the team. The TDP is limited to 16 pages and must be electronically submitted as PDF through the submission system available at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rcrs2022 no later than February 28, 2022 (23:55 UTC).

The TDP file name has to be “Agent_[TeamName]” for the Agent Competition, where [TeamName] is the name of the team submitting the TDP. This format should be also used in the “Title” field in the submission system https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rcrs2022.

Teams should prepare their Agent Competition TDP based on the templates available at https://github.com/roborescue/rcrs-templates.

All TDPs will be peer-reviewed by at least two PC members. The evaluation criteria of contributions will be based on originality, quality, clarity, and its relevance to the league’s aims.

The suggestions of the reviewers should be incorporated into an improved version (i.e., Camera-Ready version) of the TDP. The camera-ready version should be uploaded to EasyChair no later than May 31, 2022.

Qualification results will be announced on March 15, 2022.

If you have any questions please reach out to rcrs2022@easychair.org


**RULES**
Please read the Agent Simulation Competition Rules document available at 2022 RoboCup Rescue Simulation for further details.
https://cdn.robocup.org/rsim/public/competitions/2022-RSL/info/agent/rsl22-rules.pdf