RoboCup Simulation League Research Articles

Balanced reactive-deliberative architecture for multi-agent system for simulation league of RoboCup

This paper presents an architecture for a multi-agent system for the RoboCup simulation league. It consists of a dynamic dual behavior-based architecture for an intelligent agent, a behavior-based decision algorithm, and a dynamic role-based multi-agent cooperation model. A new concept called confidence function is introduced to balance reactivity and deliberation. This architecture was implemented in a team, and match results demonstrate its validity.

FC PORTUGAL: DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF A NEW ROBOCUP RESCUE TEAM

FC Portugal Rescue team is the result of a cooperation project between the Universities of Aveiro and Porto in Portugal. Following previous collaborations of these two Portuguese Universities in RoboCup simulation league and associated competitions, this project intends to fully adapt the coordination methodologies developed by FC Portugal simulated soccer team to the search and rescue scenario. After FC Portugal's first successful participation in RoboCup rescue simulation league (Osaka, 2005), the team aimed at introducing new high-level strategic analysis tools in the Rescue league and developed FCPx tool. This tool enables an easy comparison of different teams' strategies, and the use of learning methodologies for high-level strategic decisions in rescue. The tool also enabled us to evaluate our coordination methodologies, analysing the results achieved in several rescue parameters, and conclude that they are very promising for the search and rescue domain. FC Portugal Rescue team results are very promising achieving first place in RoboCup European Championship 2006 (Dutch Open) held in Eindhoven.

Effective Methods for Reinforcement Learning in Large Multi-Agent Domains (Leistungsfähige Verfahren für das Reinforcement Lernen in komplexen Multi-Agenten-Umgebungen)

Summary Robotic soccer requires the ability of individually acting agents to cooperate. The simulation league of RoboCup therefore offers an ideal testbed for evaluating multi-agent methods. In this paper we discuss how Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods can be succesfully applied within the scenario of learning to cooperatively score a goal. Due to the complexity of the task, enhanced methods of learning have to be applied. We discuss several approaches from literature and also present an own approach. All approaches are evaluated on a discretized version of robotic soccer, which we call gridworld soccer.

Artificial intelligence research in Belgium and The Netherlands

Most universities in Belgium do research in AI and offer AI courses to students. The largest part of the research is into the more classical AI subjects, such as logic programming and theorem proving. However, sub-symbolic AI is also investigated. It seems that all Belgian Universities have their own distinct flavour of research. Below, we present the different Belgian universities in alphabetical order. The Facultes Universitaires Notre Dame de la Paix Namur (University of Namur) has a group called ‘semantics and computational logic’ led by B. Le Charlier and P. Schobbens. This group is theoretically oriented and although their interests are broader than just AI, some of their research is into computational logic, automated theorem proving and formalisation of agentbased systems. The Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Flemish catholic university of Leuven) has different groups working on artificial-intelligence subjects. First of all, there is the group on declarative languages and artificial intelligence led by M. Bruynooghe. The artificialintelligence interest of this group is into knowledge representation and machine learning, with research themes such as data mining, constraint logic programming, reasoning with time, natural-language processing and learning in agents. They are also involved in the Robocup simulation league. Second, there is a group doing research into intelligent mobile robots led by H. Van Brussel and J. De Schutter. This group is part of the mechanical engineering department. Finally, there is a group at the economy department, led by J. Vanthienen and M. Verhelst, that investigates knowledge systems and modelling. At the Limburgs Universitair Centrum (Limburg University Centre) M. Gyssens of the theoretical computer science group works on the structure and complexity of constraint satisfaction problems. J. Van den Bussche of the same group works on implementation of query languages for data mining. The Universite Catholique de Louvain (French catholic university of Louvain) has several small groups investigating different AI subjects. Computational linguistics is investigated by E. Milgrom and S. Granger. Logic programming is investigated by Y. Deville. A. Thayse investigates natural-language processing, P.J. Courtois investigates self-organising systems, P. Van Hentenryck works on optimisation and constraint satisfaction and Y. Kamp investigates collective intelligence. The Universite de Liege (Montefiore) (University of Liege) has D. Gribomont working on verification methods, automatic theorem proving and formal logic. The Universitaire Instelling Antwerpen (University of Antwerp) has the centre for Dutch language and speech, led by W. Daelemans. Part of the research of this institute is purely linguistic, but a great deal of research is also performed into (memory-based) machine learning of natural language, using large corpora of text, as well as into intelligent processing of text. The Universit Libre de Bruxelles (French Free University of Brussels) has the IRIDIA (Institut de Recherches Interdisciplinaires et de Developpements en Intelligence Artificielle) group led by M. Dorigo and H. Bersini. The main research interests are: ‘belief representation and AI-techniques for process control and classification’ and ‘nature-inspired heuristics for the solution of combinatorial and continuous space optimisation problems’. Sub-symbolic techniques are

The CMUnited-99 Champion Simulator Team

The CMUNITED-99 simulator team became the 1999 RoboCup simulator league champion by winning all 8 of its games, outscoring opponents by a combined score of 110-0. CMUNITED-99 builds on the successful CMUNITED-98 implementation but also improves on it in many ways. This article gives an overview of CMUNITED-99's improvements over CMUNITED-98.

Three RoboCup Simulation League Commentator Systems

� Three systems that generate real-time natural language commentary on the RoboCup simulation league are presented, and their similarities, differences, and directions for the future discussed. Although they emphasize different aspects of the commentary problem, all three systems take simulator data as input and generate appropriate, expressive, spoken commentary in real time.

Overview of RoboCup-98

The Robot World Cup Soccer Games and Conferences (RoboCup) are a series of competitions and events designed to promote the full integration of AI and robotics research. Following the first RoboCup, held in Nagoya, Japan, in 1997, RoboCup-98 was held in Paris from 2-9 July, overlapping with the real World Cup soccer competition. RoboCup-98 included competitions in three leagues: (1) the simulation league, (2) the real robot small-size league, and (3) the real robot middle-size league. Champion teams were cmunited-98 in both the simulation and the real robot small-size leagues and cs-freiburg (Freiburg, Germany) in the real robot middle-size league. RoboCup-98 also included a Scientific Challenge Award, which was given to three research groups for their simultaneous development of fully automatic commentator systems for the RoboCup simulator league. Over 15,000 spectators watched the games, and 120 international media provided worldwide coverage of the competition.

Cooperative behaviors in multi-robot systems through implicit communication

We illustrate the Cooperation through Implicit Communication behavior-based approach used for developing the PaSo-Team (The University of Padua Simulated Soccer Robot Team), a multi-robot software system for soccer robot competitions promoted by the RoboCup Simulation League. The configuration of the environment, namely the robots’ relative positions depending on both the global task and the game dynamics, provides a source of implicit information about the robots’ intention to be involved in collective actions, making them able to cooperate implicitly. The soccer team performance can be tuned by triggering the arbitration module of any single robot to generate, as many as possible, suitable situations which hint to the team the action of scoring the goal. Some macroscopic parameters can be usefully introduced to evaluate the evolution of the whole multi-robot software system.

Building agent teams using an explicit teamwork model and learning

Multi-agent collaboration or teamwork and learning are two critical research challenges in a large number of multi-agent applications. These research challenges are highlighted in RoboCup, an international project focused on robotic and synthetic soccer as a common testbed for research in multi-agent systems. This article describes our approach to address these challenges, based on a team of soccer-playing agents built for the simulation league of RoboCup—the most popular of the RoboCup leagues so far. To address the challenge of teamwork, we investigate a novel approach based on the (re)use of a domain-independent, explicit model of teamwork, an explicitly represented hierarchy of team plans and goals, and a team organization hierarchy based on roles and role-relationships. This general approach to teamwork, shown to be applicable in other domains beyond RoboCup, both reduces development time and improves teamwork flexibility. We also demonstrate the application of off-line and on-line learning to improve and specialize agents' individual skills in RoboCup. These capabilities enabled our soccer-playing team, ISIS, to successfully participate in the first international RoboCup soccer tournament (RoboCup'97) held in Nagoya, Japan, in August 1997. ISIS won the third-place prize in over 30 teams that participated in the simulation league.