A Survey on Coordination Methodologies for Simulated Robotic Soccer Teams

Multi-agent systems (MAS) are a research topic with ever-increasing importance. This is due to their inherently distributed organization that copes more naturally with real-life problems whose solution requires people to coordinate efforts. One of its most prominent challenges consists on the creation of efficient coordination methodologies to enable the harmonious operation of teams of agents in adversarial environments. This challenge has been promoted by the Robot World Cup (RoboCup) international initiative every year since 1995. RoboCup provides a pragmatic testbed based on standardized platforms for the systematic evaluation of developed MAS coordination techniques. This initiative encompasses a simulated robotic soccer league in which 11 against 11 simulated robots play a realistic soccer game that is particularly suited for researching coordination methodologies. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the most relevant coordination techniques proposed up till now in the simulated robotic soccer domain.