Spark - A generic physical simulator Files

RELEASE News of rcssserver3d-0.7.0

A new GUI application is developed to run and control simspark simulations.
Additinoally, there are a number changes to the soccer rules enforced in
the simulator. More details about changes in this release follows:

* Updates to charging foul model and other fouls:
An initial implementation of the charging foul model is documented at
http://www.acso.uneb.br/bahiart/uploads/Main/FoulModel2016.pdf.  The
following are some updates to the charging foul model which will hopefully
be added to the documentation of the charging foul model soon:

  - Rules for charging involving agents' relative positions to the ball
    are only active for agents within 1 meter (ChargingMaxBallRulesDist) of
    the ball
  - Players are immune to committing a charging foul after touching the
    ball for 1 second (ChargingImmunityTime)
  - There is no maximum distance from the ball that a charging foul will
    be called -- charging fouls can be called at any position on or off the
    field
  - After a player is moved/beamed by the server no charging fouls in any
    collision involving that agent will be called for 1 second after the
    player is moved.
  - There is no longer a concept of ChargingMinCollisionPoint.  Instead a
    threshold of velocity  exerted in a collision (ChargingMinCollisionSpeed
    with a default value of 0.2) must be exceeded for a charging foul to be
    called.  This value is calculated as a cross product between an agent's
    velocity vector and the normalized vector from the agent to the average of
    the opponent agent and collision point.

General foul changes:

  - For visualization purposes after any foul (charging, crowding, illegal
    defense, touching, incapable) agents are lifted up in the air for
    FoulHoldTime (default 0.5 seconds) before being beamed to the sideline.
  - Touching fouls in groups of three or more are no longer called on
    goalies (a goalie's teammate will be called for a touching foul instead).


* New kick rules:

The following is a summary of the rule changes for kicking:
  - A player taking a kick can't touch the ball more than once before
    another player touches the ball -- touching the ball more than once
    results in an indirect free kick for the opponent (same as in human
    soccer).  Note that a goal kick doesn't count as having been taken until
    the ball leaves the penalty area
  - You can never score an own goal directly off your own kick -- the
    result of such an own goal is a corner kick for the opponent (same as in
    human soccer).
  - Kick-ins are indirect (same as throw-ins in human soccer).
  - Goal kicks and corner kicks are direct (same as in human soccer).
  - Scoring a goal directly from an indirect kick results in a goal kick
    for the opponent (same as in human soccer).
  - Kickoffs are still indirect and the ball must be touched outside the
    center circle, or an opponent must first touch the ball, before the team
    taking a kickoff can score (in human soccer kickoffs are direct, but this
    artificial rule is needed to prevent "kickoff taking contests").
  - Players within KickRepelDist (defined in naosoccersim.rb) of the ball
    when it is placed for a kick are moved back to a position exactly
    KickRepelDist from the ball to prevent players from accidentally touching
    the ball and losing a kick if the ball is placed right underneath their
    current position on the field.
  - Two new direct kick playmodes have been added
    (direct_free_kick_[left|right]).  While there is no plan to use these
    playmodes at this year's competition, shift+L and shift+R key bindings for
    them have been added to rcssmonitor3d and roboviz.


* Keepaway mode:

The keepaway playmode sets the playmode to GameOver if a player on the
right team touches the ball or if the ball leaves a predefined keepaway
area. During keepaway no charging fouls will be called on agents on the
right team (the team trying to take the ball).

The keepaway mode adds the following parameters to naosoccersim.rb:

// if in keepaway mode
Keepaway
// center X value of keepaway box
KeepawayCenterX
// center Y value of keepaway box
KeepawayCenterY
// length of keepaway box
KeepawayLength
// width of keepaway box
KeepawayWidth
// reduction rate of length of keepaway box per minute
KeepawayLengthReductionRate
// reduction rate of width of keepaway box per minute
KeepawayWidthReductionRate


* Blocking of say messages with illegal characters:

While most agents have been sending legal say messages, there have been a
few instances of agents sending say messages with illegal characters.  The
server now throws out say messages containing illegal characters (space,
parenthesis, and those outside the range [0x20-0x7E]).  The server also
prints an error message containing the illegal say message and the agent
who said it.  When running in sync mode the proxy still needs to be used
to protect against bad say messages that break parsing (or really any
unparseable messages sent to the server) -- this change only throws out
say messages with illegal that were able to be parsed.


* Plugin for drawing objects in roboviz:

You can activate a new plugin (rvdraw) within rcssserver3d allowing it to
draw objects in roboviz by using the "-DRVDRAW=ON" command line argument
when running cmake before building rcssserver3d.  The plugin likely only
works in linux which is why it isn't enabled by default.  Currently this
plugin is set to draw debugging information for the charging foul model,
but one might find it useful to add their own code to the server to draw
things in roboviz.

After rcssserver3d is compiled with the rvdraw plugin enabled use the
following command line argument when running the server to have it send
draw commands to roboviz:
rcssserver3d --rvdraw-host <roboviz_host_machine>


You can get the package on the Simspark page on SourceForge at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/simspark/