Multi-platform soccer robot development system

Abstract

Robot soccer is a challenging research domain, which involves multiple agents (physical robots or "softbots") to work together in a dynamic, noisy, cooperative and adversarial environment to achieve specific objectives. The paper focuses on the design and implementation of an effective system for developing a small-size physical soccer team for the competition of RoboCup. There are three goals preset in our research, that is, robust individual behaviors, controllable cooperation and behavioral learning. The system is therefore required to collect data in real-time situations and repeat experiments accurately, which are found difficult to be achieved in pure physical or simulated case. A distinct feature of our system is that it is a close combination of three functional parts: physical test platform, simulation platform and measurement platform, which support each other to overcome many defects inherent in traditional physical system or simulation system. © 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.