FIRA RoboWorld Cup and Summit 2024
5-9 August, 2024, Sao Luis, State of Maranhão, Brasil
The Federation of International RoboSports Association (FIRA) invites new and old participants to the FIRA 2024 RoboWorld Cup and Summit in Sao Luis, Brazil. The competition is to be held from 5th to 9th August 2024. 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. During the heavy influence from COVID-19, FIRA still organized an on-line event, SimulCup in 2020 – 2022. Making the FIRA RoboWorld Cup results in over 20 participating countries in 2023.
Friendly competitions in the FIRA RoboWorld Cup give all participants a chance to make new friends and learn from each other.
Important Dates
| 22nd May 2024 | Deadline for submission of qualification material |
| 31st May, 2024 | Notification to qualified teams |
| 15th June, 2024 | Deadline for early-bird registration |
| 15th July, 2024 | Deadline for regular registration |
| 2nd – 4th August 2024 | FIRA Frontiers Camp |
| 5th – 9th August 2024 | 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 2024 World Summit
The FIRA World Summit will be held in conjunction with FIRA Robot World, from 5th to 9th August, 2024. 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 2024 CfP for more information
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.
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 2025. 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 RoboWorld Cup competition. The application should be submitted via email to <[email protected]>.
Travel
São Luís (Brazilian Portuguese: [sɐ̃w luˈis], Saint Louis) is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Maranhão. The city is located on Upaon-açu Island (Big Island, in Tupi Language) or Ilha de São Luís (Saint Louis’ Island), in the Baía de São Marcos (Saint Mark’s Bay), an extension of the Atlantic Ocean which forms the estuary of Pindaré, Mearim, Itapecuru and other rivers.
August is the sunniest month of the year with a monthly average temperature between 25 °C to 32 °C.
You can fly in to “São Luís–Marechal Cunha Machado International Airport” which is located 15 km (9 mi) from downtown São Luís.
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.
Hotel information for FIRA participants
Registration fee
| Category |
Early bird registration fee by 15th June |
Regular registration fee by 15th July |
Late registration fee by 25th July |
Additional member | Condition |
|
Sport/ Challenge/ Air |
680 | 750 | 850 | 250 | 1 coach/ 4 members |
| Youth | 420 | 550 | 700 | – | 2 members + 1 coach |
| Additional member fee/Youth | 180 | 220 | 270 | – | up to 2 members can be added per a team |
| parents/chaperones | 180 | 220 | 270 | – | |
| FIRA Summit | – | 250 | 350 | – | A registration for Sports/Challenge/Air/Youth/Youth Coach/ and Frontiers Camp Participant includes complementary registration to FIRA summit |
- Youth teams must have at most one coach and two student members to register. We strongly recommend teams register all team students at once.
- Parents or other coaches need to register as Youth parents/chaperones for permission to enter the site at any time, be admitted to certain restricted areas, and participate in social events.
- The team’s work area is not accessible at any time. Parents accompanying their children who want to visit the site only during public access hours and only in areas open to the public do not need to register but buy a visitor ticket.
- Invitation letters to FIRA Summit only participants are issued to those with accepted publications. On the registration website, choose “Summit 2024 Event” for your possible registration.
- All registered team members are automatically admitted to the FRIA Summit, and they do not need to register separately.
Payment methods
Our registration website offers the following payment options:
- PayPal payment. This is the preferred method.
- Wire Transfer (USD). Available only until July 25, 2024. Wire transfer should be used in exceptional cases only if credit card payment is not possible.
Registration will be considered complete only if the amount due is received in its totality in US Dollars in the bank account on or before the respective date (e.g., June 15, for early registration). It is your responsibility to ensure this will be the case. To help expedite the payment process, please send your wire transfer transaction information to [email protected]. Wire transfer payments will be deactivated after July 25, 2024.
Visas and cancellation policy
Participants from some countries require a visa for Brazil. Once the team registration and member registration have been completed (received and paid in total), an invitation letter will be sent to those who requested one.
If your visa application is unsuccessful and your registration was completed (i.e., the payment received) by June 16, 2024, and your cancellation is requested before July 16, 2024, then the total registration amount will be refunded, except for a handling charge of $100 per person, if the team is also canceled. Otherwise, there is no refund.
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
