Pareto-optimal collaborative defensive player positioning in simulated soccer

Abstract

The ability by the simulated soccer player to make rational decisions about moving without ball is a critical factor of success. In this study the focus is placed on the defensive situation, when the ball is controlled by the opponent team in 2D simulated soccer. Methods for finding good defensive positions by the robotic soccer players have been investigated by some RoboCup scholars. Although soccer teams using these methods have proved to be reasonably good, the collaboration issue in defense has been overlooked. In this paper, we demonstrate that collaboration in defense yields better results. In doing so, we treat optimal defensive positioning as a multi-criteria assignment problem and propose a systematic approach for solving it. Besides achieving better performance, this makes it possible to gracefully balance the costs and rewards involved in defensive positioning. © 2010 Springer.