FIRA RoboWorld Cup and Summit 2023
17th – 21st July 2023, Lindenhalle, Wolfenbüttel, Germany
The Federation of International RoboSports Association (FIRA) invites new and old participants to the FIRA 2023 RoboWorld Cup and Summit in Wolfenbüttel, Germany. The competition is to be held from 17th to 21st July 2023. FIRA is the oldest intelligent robot soccer competition and was founded by Prof. Jong-Hwan Kim, KAIST, Korea in 1996. FIRA focuses on three goals: (a) to provide challenging and motivating benchmark problems for state of the art research in intelligent robotics, (b) to give senior students with valuable skills and experiences that allow them to be productive and develop their careers in the new economy, and (c) to introduce junior students to the fundamentals of STEAM topics (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math).
The FIRA RoboWorld Cup includes competitions in the following leagues:
- FIRA AIR includes the use of autonomous flying vehicles in urban and disaster scenarios.
- FIRA Sports was the goal of developing robot athletes that can compete against humans in Olympic events
- FIRA Challenges focuses on complex challenges in industrial, rescue, and service robot settings
- FIRA Youth are competitions for our younger participants such as the mission impossible events
FIRA has experienced rapid growth in recent years. Before Covid-19 pandemic, the FIRA RoboWorld Cup 2019 in Changwon, South Korea attracted more than 1,500 participants.
Friendly competitions in the FIRA RoboWorld Cup give all participants a chance to make new friends and learn from each other.
Important Dates
| 14th April 2023 | Deadline for submission of qualification material |
| 15th May, 2023 | Notification to qualified teams |
| 30th May, 2023 | Deadline for early-bird registration |
| 14th June, 2023 | Deadline for regular registration |
| 14th – 17th July 2023 | FIRA Frontiers Camp |
| 17th – 21st July 2023 | FIRA RoboWorld Cup and FIRA Summit |
Qualification
Teams that are interested in participating must submit their qualification material before the deadline. The qualification procedure is dependent on the division and league. Please contact the chairs and co-chairs of the event if you have any further questions.
FIRA Sports, FIRA Challenge, and FIRA Air
Qualification consists of two parts: (1) A max. 5 min long video showing the performance of your robot, and (2) a research paper for FIRA World Summit (max. 12 pages in Springer LNCS format).
Videos
Videos must be uploaded to a publicly accessible video sharing site such as Youtube or Vimeo. Post a link into the FIRA official registration website, available in https://firaworldcup.org
Team description paper (TDP)
All teams from this year should submit a team description paper (TDP). The TDP is limited to 6 pages maximum and must be submitted in PDF format. This report fully describes the scientific aspects of your robot system and your research interests, includes a summary of previous relevant achievements in research and development as well as publications, and mentions prior performance in FIRA competitions.
The TDP must follow the LNCS format which can be downloaded from http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0. Please pay special attention to the “Author guidelines” that you’ll be able to find there. Teams that do to follow the LNCS formatting and style guidelines will not be qualified.
FIRA Youth
Teams that are represented by a FIRA Chapter must qualify and register via their FIRA Chapter.
Teams that do not yet have a chapter may contact FIRA HQ directly for qualification. In this case, they should submit a two page write-up in English describing their previous experience in robotics and their motivation for joining the FIRA competition.
In addition, participants that would like to take part in the United Nations Mission must submit a two page write-up in English describing their previous experience in robotics and their motivation for joining the United Nations Mission.
Please note that each participant can only register in a maximum of three events.
Mission Impossible consists of three events this year, (1) Mission Impossible_H (Hardware) (2) Mission Impossible_S (Software) (3) Mission Impossible_U (United), and a prize for best team over all three events Mission Impossible Allround.
FIRA 2023 World Summit
The FIRA World Summit will be held in conjunction with FIRA Robot World SimulCup, from 17th to 21st July, 2023. The purposes of organizing FIRA RoboWorld Cup and Summit are to share many ideas and research results in AI and robotics areas. The FIRA Summit is soliciting novel research results on advanced robotics, intelligent systems, and building successful simulations for robots and systems. Please go through the Summit 2023 CfP for more information https://easychair.org/cfp/FIRAWorldSummit2023.
Best Student Paper Award
FIRA Summit will award one best student paper award to the paper with a student as first author and that was presented by a student during the summit. The award will be judged by a jury whose members were selected from the FIRA community.
FIRA Summit will be held as an hybrid event hosted on the official FIRA Discord https://discord.gg/ypsK2cRwqw channel .
Submission
Papers submitted should be written in English and at least two pages in single-column formats. All papers will be peer-reviewed, and evaluated by members of the senior FIRA Summit program committee.
Papers should be formatted following the LNAI author guidelines (https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines) and must be electronically submitted through the EasyChair electronic submission system.
Selected papers will be recommended to be submitted to the Special Issue of the Knowledge Engineering Review, indexed in Science Citation Index (SCI) of Web of Science.
Dr. Cheng Memorial Scholarship
The FIRA headquarter will award two scholarships ($500 travel support for FIRA 2024) for the one male and one female student participating in FIRA 2023. The scholarships are in memory of Dr. Chi Tai Cheng, a very active and influential member of the FIRA community who sadly passed away from cancer in 2015.
The applications for the scholarship must be submitted by the team leaders. Each team leader is allowed to nominate one male and one female student from their team for this award. The students must prepare a 2 – 3-page application showing their technical skills, awareness of social issues, leadership potential, and extracurricular activities. The report also must clearly indicate their name, team name and their previous involvement in robotics and the FIRA competitions. The deadline for submission is the end of the second day of every year’s FIRA Robot World Cup competition. The application should be submitted via email to <[email protected]>.
FIRA Frontiers Camp [FFC]
14th – 16th July 2023, Wolfenbüttel, Germany
The FIRA Frontiers Camp (FFC), to be held just prior to the FIRA RoboWorld Cup, provides a unique opportunity to learn the fundamentals of robotics. The focus is on basic problem-solving strategies, system development, testing, and debugging. This year, our FIRA Frontiers students will learn physics, coding, controlling, and software design in the domain of autonomous drones. It also teaches students how to apply their robotics skills in other subjects such as physics and biology.
It must be stressed that the goal of the school is not to directly improve the chances of winning the following FIRA competitions. In fact, the lecturers and coaches will not be directly involved in the following FIRA competition as much as possible and will be told not to provide tricks and hints for the coming competition.
The FIRA Frontiers Camp is agnostic to the specific robot development kit and uses open-source software and hardware as much as possible.
Important Dates
| 18th May 2023 | Deadline for submission of qualification material |
| 25th May, 2023 | Notification to qualified teams |
| 10th June, 2023 | Deadline for early-bird registration |
| 24th June, 2023 | Deadline for regular registration |
Qualification
Each participant must submit their own qualification material in English. Please provide a 1 – 2 page description of your previous experience, your current robot system and development environment, and your interest in robotics. In addition, participant personal data, such as name, school, address, phone, email, etc, is also included.
Submit your material as a pdf file to the Christine Kim ([email protected])
The following fees include registration fee, tuition costs, teaching materials.
FIRA Frontiers Camp Venue:
The University of Applied Sciences has been operating under the name of “Ostfalia“ since 2009, giving consideration to its continuous growth and its regional identity, as all four sites are located in Eastphalia (Ostfalen), a region of Old Saxony extending between the Weser and Elbe rivers, the Lüneburg Heath, and the Harz range. Metropolitan centers such as Hamburg or Berlin are only a two-hour drive away. The following illustration shows where each of the university‘s faculties are located.
Venue and Competition Schedule
Tentative Schedule
- 14th – 16th July: FIRA Frontier Camp [FFC]
- 17th July: Set-up & registration for FIRA RoboWorld Cup
- 18th July: Opening ceremony, Competition
- 18th – 21st July: Competition *detailed schedule will be announced
- 21st July: Closing (Victory) Ceremony
- 21st July: Banquet
Click to find out more about Lindenhalle Wolfenbüttel
Travel
Wolfenbüttel is a historic small renaissance city in the northern part of Germany. There are over 600 timber framed houses. It was the residence of Duke August, a supporter of arts and science and has attracted many famous researchers in its heyday. Leibniz and Lessing were librarians of the Duke August library. The history of the city provides a unique charm with its cafes and shops. Braunschweig, Salzgitter, and Wolfsburg are other cities close by. The Harz mountains south of Wolfenbüttel are famous for their beauty and attract many hikers.
Hannover airport is the closest international airport to Wolfenbüttel, but the city can also easily be reached via high speed train (ICE). For example, it takes 3.5 hrs from Frankfurt International airport. This is also a convenient option, since the train station is in the basement of the international airport. Wolfenbüttel can also be reached from Hamburg and Berlin via ICE train in about 2 hrs.
Accommodation
There are many hotels near the venue however, there is no dormitory in the area. Please check out hotels below, hotels provide special rates from FIRA participants. Most of them are 3 minutes by car.
Groups of participants can stay in a school gymnasium/sports hall. The school will provide gym/yoga mats. Participants must bring their own bedding (sleeping bag, sheets, pillows, …). The schools have sanitary facilities. The cost of this accommodation will be approximately $10 USD per person per night.
We also have arranged for block bookings at the following hotels:
- Jugendgästehaus Hotel,
- Parkhotel Hotel,
- Rilano Hotel,
- Hotel Forsthaus Hotel,
- Bundesakademie (Gaestehaus) Hotel,
- Landhaus Dürkop Hotel,
- Hotel Gästehaus Linden.
Make sure that you use the FIRA code for your reservation. Special room rates for FIRA 2023 participants and reservation form
Registration fee
| Category |
Early bird registration fee by 18th May |
Regular registration fee by 6th June |
Late registration fee by 15th June |
Additional member | Condition |
|
Sport/ Challenge/ Air |
680 | 750 | 850 | 250 | 1 coach/ 4 members |
| Youth | 160 | 200 | 250 | – | up to 3 games |
| Youth coach | 100 | 150 | 200 | – | |
| FIRA Frontiers Camp Participant | – | 250 | 350 | – | Includes registration, teaching material, and |
| FIRA Summit | – | 250 | 350 | – | A registration for Sports/Challenge/Air/Youth/Youth Coach/ and Frontiers Camp Participant includes complementary registration to FIRA summit |
More information on the FIRA official website
More information on the FIRA social medias
https://www.facebook.com/groups/firarobot/
https://www.instagram.com/firaworldcup/?hl=en
https://www.linkedin.com/company/fira-roboworldcup/
Contact
FIRA HQ Executive Secretary: Christine Kim [email protected]/ +82-10-5208-4354
FIRA World Summit Chair: Prof. Soroush Sadeghnejad [email protected]/ +98-21-64545952
