Autonomous learning of ball trapping in the four-legged robot league

Abstract

This paper describes an autonomous learning method used with real robots in order to acquire ball trapping skills in the four-legged robot league. These skills involve stopping and controlling an oncoming ball and are essential to passing a ball to each other. We first prepare some training equipment and then experiment with only one robot. The robot can use our method to acquire these necessary skills on its own, much in the same way that a human practicing against a wall can learn the proper movements and actions of soccer on his/her own. We also experiment with two robots, and our findings suggest that robots communicating between each other can learn more rapidly than those without any communication. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.