The CMUnited-97 robotic soccer team: Perception and multi-agent control

Robotic soccer is a challenging research domain which involves multiple agents that need to collaborate in an adversarial environment to achieve specific objectives. In this paper, we describe CMUnited-97, the team of small robotic agents that we developed to enter the RoboCup-97 competition. We designed and built the robotic agents, devised the appropriate vision algorithm, and developed and implemented algorithms for strategic collaboration between the robots in an uncertain and dynamic environment. The robots can organize themselves in formations, hold specific roles, and pursue their goals. In game situations, they have demonstrated their collaborative behaviors on multiple occasions. The robots can also switch roles to maximize the overall performance of the team. We present an overview of the vision processing algorithm which successfully tracks multiple moving objects and predicts trajectories. The paper then focuses on the agent behaviors ranging from low-level individual behaviors to coordinated, strategic team behaviors. CMUnited-97 won the RoboCup-97 small-robot competition at IJCAI-97 in Nagoya, Japan. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.