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Beginner's Guide
Welcome to the RoboCup team! We are always pleased to get new members and we’re excited about your interest in helping out. Participating on the team is a fun and rewarding experience (plus you get hands-on experience with a large codebase, group code, version control, C++, Python, Java, etc. which you will almost NEVER learn in a class and is highly valued afterwards in the “real” world). Plus it is an awesome chance to do some undergraduate research and even publish a paper. It is great to be able to work on some code and then see the changes that you have made make a difference in the way that the Nao plays.
The number to the lab is 798-7125 or x7125. If you don’t have card access, call before coming down to see if someone is around to let you in, or call to be let in because we can’t always hear you knock. After you join, we’ll get you card access to the door.
Our team uses a large codebase comprising the many different areas of Robocup that help the robots play soccer (vision, behavior, etc). The code is then downloaded onto the robots and they play soccer autonomously.
The team only supports Linux (a free, open-source operating system, similar to macOS or Windows) as a development platform. If you have a Linux machine already, great; if you don’t, not to worry. We have several machines in the lab for you to borrow. If you want to work on your own computer, you can install Linux or a Parallels application on your own machine (and even still keep Mac/Windows) if you want. You can read about dual-booting or virtualization (different ways of installing Linux on your own computer) in the Setup Guide.
- Read through Robocup A-Z. This will help you familiarize yourself with many of the common terms that you will hear all the time as a part of the team and get a better sense of what’s going on when people are talking about in things in Robocup.
- Set up your computer for development. Want to write code for the robots? You’ll need a computer that can run the code and is set up for contribution. The setup process is pretty complicated, so you’ll need to follow the steps on our setup page. Ask any team member for help at any step of the process — they’re all super friendly and would love to give you a hand.
- Learn How to take a Log. This is the quickest and easiest way to start helping out the team. This can be done even before you set up your computer and requires no coding! Ask a team member to use one of the lab computers.
- Go through the Newbie Exercises. Robocup involves a lot of learning! We use three programming languages and even more external tools, and knowing how they all work is critical for development.
- Read about contribution, learn about the codebase, and pick a project. Now that you've learned about the team (and maybe even taken a log or two), chat with the captains about where to go from here.