Cadence
The PM's rhythm is measured weekly and yearly. The week is built from meetings that repeat; the year is organized around TMR, RoboCup, TDP, and demos. This page is the reference for what happens when.
The four weekly meetings
Home runs four distinct meetings every week. None of them are optional. The cadence is what keeps the team synchronized and the spotlights alive.
The team uses Microsoft Teams for meetings and WhatsApp (the team's community group) for everything else.
About meeting length
Durations vary. The recommendation from past PMs is to keep regular meetings under one hour. The exception is a work meeting, where the team sits together to align on details and push work forward in a short time. Those can justify running longer because they replace a chunk of asynchronous work.
1. Home general meeting
| Attendees | All Home members, general PMs, area PMs |
| Facilitator | General PMs |
| Frequency | Once a week |
Each area PM presents the area's spotlight: what they did, what is in progress, what is blocking them. This is the moment where cross-area dependencies surface in real time.
The spotlight gets presented, not invented
If an area PM shows up without an update prepared, that is already a miss. The spotlight should have been updated during the area's own weekly meeting before the general meeting.
2. Per-area meeting
| Attendees | Area PM and area members |
| Facilitator | Area PM |
| Frequency | Once a week, on a different day than the general meeting |
This is where work actually gets assigned, technical questions get resolved, and the area's spotlight gets written. The general meeting is the summary; the area meeting is where the real work happens.
Suggested agenda:
- Round-robin updates (3 to 5 minutes per member).
- Blockers. Who needs what to keep going.
- Task assignment for the coming week.
- Spotlight wrap-up. Write down what gets presented in the general meeting.
3. PM meeting
| Attendees | General PMs and area PMs |
| Facilitator | General PMs |
| Frequency | Once a week |
No regular members. This is where we discuss:
- Cross-area blockers that need API or timeline negotiation between areas.
- Purchase requests that an area PM wants to push upward.
- Member issues that the area PM cannot resolve alone.
- Changes to the macro timeline.
4. Cross-competition meeting
| Attendees | Home general PMs, leads of the other RoBorregos competitions, RoBorregos team president |
| Facilitator | RoBorregos team president |
| Frequency | Set by the team president (confirm with them) |
This meeting coordinates across sister competitions: shared budget, team events, press, sponsor visits. Only the general PMs attend (not the area PMs).
You are not in the room, but it affects you
Decisions taken here can change Home's calendar or budget. Ask the general PMs for a summary in the next PM meeting.
Visual summary
flowchart LR
JI["Per-area meeting<br/>(area in isolation)"]
SP["Area spotlight<br/>updated"]
JG["Home general meeting<br/>(spotlights presented)"]
JPM["PM meeting<br/>(cross-area)"]
JCC["Cross-competition meeting<br/>(with RB president)"]
JI --> SP --> JG
JG --> JPM
JPM --> JCC
style JI fill:#e1f5fe
style SP fill:#fff3e0
style JG fill:#1e88e5,color:#fff
style JPM fill:#43a047,color:#fff
style JCC fill:#0b2545,color:#fffSpotlights: who writes them and how
Spotlights live in this site (Home-Docs) under the Weekly Spotlights section of each area.
Who writes them
Two patterns both work. Each area picks the one that fits.
The area PM writes the spotlight from what was discussed in the weekly area meeting.
Pro: consistent style, easy to read. Con: all the work lands on the PM.
Each member writes their own bullets (in WhatsApp, in a Google Doc, or directly in the PR). The PM consolidates and publishes.
Pro: distributes the work; members get used to documenting. Con: inconsistent style; the PM has to edit.
Recommendation
Use a mix. Ask members to send you one to three bullets through the team WhatsApp at the end of their area meeting. You consolidate and publish. It takes ten minutes, spreads the work, and the members' bullets show up in the repo (which motivates them).
When to publish
The spotlight for week N gets published before the general meeting that same week. The point of the general meeting is to present what is already written, not to draft it live.
Style
There is a single style for Home (see docs/development/manipulation/spotlights.md as the reference):
## YYYY-MM-DD
**Done:**
- **Owner** 💻 short description of the task.
- **Owner** 💻 another task.
**In Progress:**
- **Owner** 💻 description.
**Notes / News (optional):**
- New members, events, etc.
Emojis next to the owner: 💻 development, 📝 docs, 🔍 research, 🔧 bug fix, 🔄 refactor, 🤝 cross-area.
Yearly calendar
The big milestones a Home PM has to plan around. Dates below are taken from the 2025-2026 cycle. Confirm the current year's dates on the RoboCup @Home Call for Participation page.
gantt
title Yearly calendar (based on the 2025-2026 cycle)
dateFormat YYYY-MM-DD
axisFormat %b
section Recruiting + onboarding
Candidates event : 2025-08-25, 2025-10-31
Selection + welcoming : 2025-10-31, 2025-11-15
Per-area onboarding (varies) : 2025-11-15, 2026-01-15
section RoboCup early call
Call published : milestone, 2025-10-07, 0d
Intention deadline : milestone, 2025-10-31, 0d
TDP / video / website : milestone, 2025-11-30, 0d
Qualification announcement : milestone, 2025-12-23, 0d
Participation confirmation : milestone, 2026-01-23, 0d
section RoboCup late call
Call published : milestone, 2026-01-09, 0d
Intention deadline : milestone, 2026-02-03, 0d
TDP / video / website : milestone, 2026-02-10, 0d
Qualification announcement : milestone, 2026-03-06, 0d
Participation confirmation : milestone, 2026-04-06, 0d
section Competitions
TMR (national, around April) : crit, 2026-04-01, 2026-04-30
Junior migration window opens : milestone, 2026-04-30, 0d
RoboCup 2026 : crit, 2026-06-30, 2026-07-06
section Ongoing
Saturday demos : 2025-11-15, 2026-07-06
PM handoff (before they leave): milestone, 2026-08-01, 0dRoboCup @Home call deadlines
The official source is athome.robocup.org/call-for-participation. There are typically two windows; teams aim for whichever fits their TDP readiness.
| Stage | Early call | Late call |
|---|---|---|
| Call for Participation published | Oct 7, 2025 | Jan 9, 2026 |
| Submission of participation intention | Oct 31, 2025 | Feb 3, 2026 |
| Submission of qualification material (TDP, video, website) | Nov 30, 2025 | Feb 10, 2026 |
| Qualification announcement | Dec 23, 2025 | Mar 6, 2026 |
| Participation confirmation | Jan 23, 2026 | Apr 6, 2026 |
Home's default is to target the early call
Aim for the early call (TDP and qualification material due around November 30). Qualifying early lets the team:
- Buy flights and components well in advance, while they are cheaper.
- Use "we have qualified for the international competition" as concrete leverage in sponsor conversations, instead of "we are hoping to qualify".
The late call (February deadline) exists as a fallback. Treat it as the safety net, not the default plan.
TMR (around April)
The national competition. Exact date varies year to year, but it has happened in April in recent cycles. Confirm the current year's date with the general PMs.
For PMs the rule of thumb is: anything that lands in the last few weeks before TMR has to be a bug fix or a polish, not a new feature. Pushing a new feature two weeks before the competition is the most common cause of avoidable failures.
RoboCup 2026
In 2026 the dates are June 30 to July 6. The location and exact schedule are published on the RoboCup site.
To attend the international competition the team has to qualify by submitting the TDP, team video, and team website by the deadline of either the early or late RoboCup @Home call (see the table above). Once qualified, the team needs to confirm participation by the corresponding date and then plan travel.
For PMs:
- International logistics (visas, flights, lodging) take months. Start them as soon as qualification is announced (December for the early call, March for the late call).
- Hardware packed and inspected twice before the trip. Pack spares.
TDP (Team Description Paper)
The yearly paper that documents Home's system. It is a required deliverable for RoboCup; without it you do not qualify.
- Structure: each area writes its section. The length is whatever the call requires that year.
- Lead: general PMs coordinate; area PMs write their sections.
- Timing: aim for the early call (TDP due around Nov 30). That gives the team a qualified status by late December, which unlocks earlier flight bookings and stronger sponsor conversations. If the early call slips, the late call (TDP due around Feb 10) is the fallback.
- Where to submit: through the upload portal on the RoboCup @Home Call for Participation page.
Demos and presentations
The team runs demos on Saturdays. The reason is practical: on weekdays the lab tends to be busy and not clean enough to set up the task scenarios properly. Saturday gives space and quiet to run a real end-to-end demo without people bumping into the robot.
Demos happen for several audiences over the year (sponsors, the school, advanced candidates, internal press). The exact schedule of who comes to which Saturday is coordinated with the general PMs and the team president.
As a PM you should always have a demo-ready version of the robot. That is what communicates progress to the outside. Keep a working version separate from the one that is actively in development.