Tuesday, June 12, 2007

RoboCup 2007 Atlanta Newsletter #4

Less than 3 weeks to go! This newsletter contains very
important information for RoboCup participants. Please
read it carefully.

Topics in this newsletter:

o Venues and Schedule
o Hotels and Campus Housing
o Are you Registered Correctly?
o Shipping Robots and Equipment
o Share your pictures!
o Do you need 220V?

Our next newsletter will provide details on travel from the
airport to check in and registration.

------------------------------------------------------------
Venues and Schedule

There are four venues for RoboCup 2007. They are all
located on or near the Georgia Tech campus. They are all
walking distance from each other, but we will also have
special buses running throughout the day to connect them.

The Georgia Tech Campus Recreation Center (CRC) is the
main robot venue. The CRC is located next to west campus
housing where senior teams have rooms. TSRB is the main
venue for simulation events and the Nanogram Demonstration.
The Georgia Tech Student Center will host Junior Dance and
Junior Rescue (Junior Soccer will be in the CRC). The
4LL and Microsoft Challenge will be held in the Fox Theatre
during the preliminary rounds (July 1-6). They relocate
from the Fox to the CRC for the finals.

Draft schedules for the overall event, and arranged per
league are available here:

http://www.robocup-us.org/schedule-detailed.html
http://www.robocup-us.org/schedule-league.html

Detailed maps are here:

http://www.robocup-us.org/lodging.html


------------------------------------------------------------
Hotels and Campus Housing

Registration for campus housing is CLOSED. Please be
be advised that if you are staying on campus, your badge
(credential) will indicate this. For security and safety
we request that you wear your badge at all times.

If you don't have a room reservation, NOW is the time to
get one. We have been advised by the Indigo Hotel that they
still have rooms. We recommend Indigo because it is a quite
attractive hotel at a low price, and it is located across
the street from the Fox Theatre. Be sure to ask for the
RoboCup rate of $105.

http://www.midtownatlantahotel.com


------------------------------------------------------------
Are you Registered Correctly?

Registration is now closed. Please make sure you and your
team are registered correctly. You can check your
registration here:

http://www.georgiarobotics.com/robocup/teams/

We will keep this site up only briefly, and it is secured
with a password to protect private information:

atlanta
registration


------------------------------------------------------------
Shipping Robots and Equipment

We have set up a receiving center at Georgia Tech for the
express purpose of receiving robots and other equipment
for RoboCup 2007.

All costs for shipping to Georgia Tech, and then back to
your university must be handled by you. When you arrange
shipping to Atlanta, please also arrange for shipping back
to your university.

We accept responsibility for your equipment when it arrives
at Georgia Tech. Your crates will be delivered to the
appropriate venue when that venue opens. After the
competition we will transport the crates back to our
receiving center to be picked up by the shipping companies.

Detailed instructions are at the page below. Please
follow the instructions carefully:

http://www.robocup-us.org/transportationandshipping.html


------------------------------------------------------------
Share Your Pictures!

We have set up a website for sharing photos of RoboCup 2007.
We invite all participants and spectators to post their
photos there. Start now by showing us pictures of your home
university.

There are some photos now of the venues:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/robocup


------------------------------------------------------------
Do you Need 220V?

We will provide standard US power outlets at paddock areas.
Standard US power is 110 V AC at 60 Hz. Some leagues and
teams have asked about 220 or 240 V AC power. It is
difficult (and expensive) to anticipate who will need which
type, so we request you purchase an appropriate converter
at the store below, and have the converter shipped to your
team at Georgia Tech:

http://www.voltageconverters.com/voltage_converters.html

Use the following address:

Your Name / RoboCup 07 XXXXXX League
College of Computing
888 Hemphill Avenue NW
Atlanta, GA 30318
USA

Shipping takes two days from the supplier.

____________________________________________________________
We are able to host RoboCup 2007 Atlanta thanks to the
generosity of:

KUKA Robotics
Microsoft
CITIZEN
Lockheed Martin
Georgia Tech

2 comments:

Inspir@tions said...

I'm pleased to get important information on RoboCup from this blog. I really appreciate the efforts made by the people in working community.
But I need more information.
As a foreinger, I'd like to know the climate of the area in July.
I hope the climate in this season will be confort.

Cheers

ali said...

I am Alireza Kashanipour, author of the paper #183. Today I've recieved an email informing me that my poster will not being published in the proceeding of the Symposium because I was absent. But I've got reasons which I thought you knew about.
We got so many problems from the beginning. we paid the registration fee very difficultly because Iran was on probation by Paypal, and we had to find someone outside Iran to pay for us. And at last when I received the invitation letter, the Ministry of Science neither gave me any money support nor exit permission. You should know that all the money spent in this project plus registration fee was paid by ourselves.
This was about the paper authors, but things weren't better about our Robotic team (who achieved the first place last year in Germany(middle size)). They could get exit permission after seeing so many people in Ministry! But they couldn't make it to Atlanta because the US Embassy in Cyprus didn't gave them visa, even to their coach. Only 2 of them were received visa but it wasn't sufficient for running the team, so they decided not to go either. Thus, we got no chance to be there in Atlanta and present our poster, which we would really love to do.
On the other hand, a second problem arised when our consent to publish was lost in the post and after so many phone calls and emails, you finally received it on time.
And the reason that I hadn't wrote you about this before issue is that some of professors in my university told me not to worry because you would understand the situation about Iranian students and already know that we probably wouldn't be there.
As you see, we've worked so much on this paper till know, and it's not fair that you stop us here. Please consider this special situation that our country is in. We want to be able to submit our paper and then attend in the conference and meet other people, just like other students in the world, but it's not in our hands. And I think you should make an exception for us.