Prediction, Behaviors, and Collaboration in a Team of Robotic Soccer Agents

Robotic soccer is a challenging research domain which involves multiple agents that need to collaborate in an adversarial environment to achieve specific objectives. In this paper, we describe CMUnited-97, the team of small robotic agents that we developed to enter the RoboCup-97 competition. We designed and built the robotic agents, devised the appropriate vision algorithm, and developed algorithms for strategic collaboration between the robots in an uncertain and dynamic environment. The robots can organize themselves in formations, hold specific roles, and pursue their goals. In game situations, they have demonstrated their collaborative behaviors on multiple occasions. The robots can also switch roles to maximize the overall performance of the team. We present our vision processing algorithm which successfully tracks multiple moving objects and predicts trajectories. The paper then focusses on the agent behaviors ranging from low-level individual behaviors to coordinated, strategic team behaviors. CMUnited won the RoboCup-97 small-robot competition at IJCAI-97 in Nagoya, Japan. Topic areas: Multi-agent vision and robotics Cooperative problem solving This research is sponsored in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and Rome Laboratory, Air Force Materiel Command, USAF, under agreement number F30602-95-1-0018 and in part by the Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research under contract number N00014-95-1-0591. Views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of the Air Force, of the Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research or the United States Government.