First of all, we would like to sincerely thank the entire organizing team for the work you’ve done to overcome the recent challenges and keep the competition moving forward.
We have carefully read the announced changes and would like to share a few considerations:
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Replacement of ZED Cameras with 3D LiDAR
We’ve noticed that the original ZED stereo camera setup has been replaced with a 3D LiDAR system. While we understand the technical challenges involved, we believe that such a significant change at this stage of the competition may be unfair to many teams.
Our team, and likely others as well, has invested considerable time in developing a pipeline based on stereo or RGBD cameras. This includes visual odometry and mapping solutions specifically designed around this hardware.
Switching to a LiDAR based setup now would require us to fundamentally redesign our software architecture and discard a substantial amount of work already completed.
Moreover, this change could disadvantage teams that have not previously had access to 3D LiDARs, given their high cost and limited availability.
It should not be too difficult to have a setup that includes a single stereo camera, even if it’s not a ZED model. -
Team Reduction for the Payload Test
We’re also concerned about the decision to reduce the number of participating teams to just 10 for the Payload Test.
It seems that this selection will be based primarily on connectivity and setup tests, which may be influenced by factors beyond the teams’ technical decisions.
We feel that eliminating so many teams based on these criteria alone may not reflect their full potential or the effort they have put into the competition. -
Cancellation of Challenge 2
While we understand the rationale behind dropping Challenge 2 in order to focus on quality, we also want to emphasize that a lot of work from the teams has already gone into preparing for it.
As suggested by Criss Robotics in a previous post, we believe it would be valuable to still acknowledge this effort. For example by allowing teams to submit a report or demo that could be evaluated in some form.
Once again, we appreciate your transparency and all the work being done to adapt and improve the competition. We hope our feedback can be taken into consideration moving forward.