In contrast to human soccer players, autonomous robot soccer players often move according to a limited set of predefined behavioural rules. This knowledge can be used advantageously: If the opponent’s behavioural rules are learned, it will be possible to detect these during a match and react accordingly. A method for autonomous activity mining in videos, called Probabilistic Latent Sequential M...

The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of the goalkeeper as an outfield player on defensive subsystems in the team sport of futsal. For this purpose, all sequences of play involving the goalkeeper (n = 65), and the sequences without a goalkeeper (controls) (n = 11), were selected from digital video footage of a futsal competition, and analysed using TACTO software. The defensive...

When facing penalty kicks in football (soccer), goalkeepers frequently incorporate strategies that are designed to distract the kicker. However, no direct empirical evidence exists to ascertain what effect such visual distractions have on the attentional control, and performance, of footballers. Eighteen experienced footballers took five penalty kicks under counterbalanced conditions of threat ...

The present study investigates the influence of goalkeeper displacement on goal-side selection in soccer penalty kicking. Facing a penalty situation, participants viewed photo-realistic images of a goalkeeper and a soccer goal. In the action selection task, they were asked to kick to the greater goal-side, and in the perception task, they indicated the position of the goalkeeper on the goal lin...

This paper deals with the feedback control of a goalkeeper. The algorithm is based on the use of geometrical rules, where the goalkeeper moves on lines which are parallel to the initial line that joins the robot and the ball. The robot moves with a constant velocity and is controlled in the orientation angle, which is a continuous function of the ball’s velocity and orientation. It turns out th...

This paper describes the design, implementation and test of a goalkeeper robot for the Middle-Size League of RoboCup. The goalkeeper task is implemented by a set of primitive tasks and behaviors, coordinated by a 2-level hierarchical state machine. The primitive tasks concerning complex motion control are implemented by a non-linear control algorithm, adapted to the di erent task goals (e.g., f...

This paper reviews research on decision-making behavior of both goalkeeper and penalty taker during penalty kick situations in association football. Specifically, it adopts an ecological dynamics perspective on the behavior of both penalty taker and goalkeeper exemplifying how each might constrain the other’s decisions. This conceptual framework is elucidated to suggest key ideas for designing ...

This paper describes our approach on evolving a robot controller to generate a set of goalkeeper behaviours in the RoboCup domain based on the genetic programming (GP) technique. The goalkeeper agent is a software construct that operates in a simulated environment provided by the Soccer Server. Our research is to determine the conditions that need to be met for an evolved goalkeeper agent to pe...

The current study sought to test the predictions of attentional control theory (ACT) in a sporting environment. Fourteen experienced footballers took penalty kicks under low- and high-threat counterbalanced conditions while wearing a gaze registration system. Fixations to target locations (goalkeeper and goal area) were determined using frame-by-frame analysis. When anxious, footballers made fa...