Genetic programming for robot soccer

Abstract

RoboCup is a complex simulated environment in which a team of players must cooperate to overcome their opposition in a game of soccer. This paper describes three experiments in the use of genetic programming to develop teams for RoboCup. The experiments used different combinations of low level and high level functions. The teams generated in experiment 2 were clearly better than the teams in experiment 1, and reached the level of 'school boy soccer' where the players follow the ball and try to kick it. The teams generated in experiment 3 were quite good, however they were not as good as the teams evolved in experiment 2. The results suggest that genetic programming could be used to develop viable teams for the competition, however, much more work is needed on the higher level functions, fitness measures and fitness evaluation. © 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.