Synthesized cooperative strategies for intelligent multi-robots in a real-time distributed environment : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

In the robot soccer domain, real-time response usually curtails the development of more complex Al-based game strategies, path-planning and team cooperation between intelligent agents. In light of this problem, distributing computationally intensive algorithms between several machines to control, coordinate and dynamically assign roles to a team of robots, and allowing them to communicate via a network gives rise to real-time cooperation in a multi-robotic team. This research presents a myriad of algorithms tested on a distributed system platform that allows for cooperating multi- agents in a dynamic environment. The test bed is an extension of a popular robot simulation system in the public domain developed at Carnegie Mellon University, known as TeamBots. A low-level real-time network game protocol using TCP/IP and UDP were incorporated to allow for a conglomeration of multi-agent to communicate and work cohesively as a team. Intelligent agents were defined to take on roles such as game coach agent, vision agent, and soccer player agents. Further, team cooperation is demonstrated by integrating a real-time fuzzy logic-based ball-passing algorithm and a fuzzy logic algorithm for path planning. Keywords Artificial Intelligence, Ball Passing, the coaching system, Collaborative, Distributed Multi-Agent, Fuzzy Logic, Role Assignmen

Mobile robot construction for edutainment application

As time goes on, there are more and more robotics applications. The limit is almost the imagination of each person. A great deal of industrial work can yet be done by robots and new ideas are blossoming. The entertainment industry is arriving and there are already many ideas as well as real robots on the field. It is important to point out that the entertainment applications not just entertain people as it also brings new research which will then be used in industrial work applications. This paper describes a team of robot football players which compete in a worldwide scientific challenge – the RoboCup.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Optimization of fast moving robots and implementation of I2C protocol to control electronic devices

This paper briefly describes the main changes in the robots from Minho Team since the last RoboCup. Work has been carried out on the robots in order to constantly improve their capabilities, based on the experiences from previous participations. The main topics to deal in this paper are related with the I2C new communications protocol recently implemented in the robots, a description of the whole electronics system based on a new diagram which contains all the devices used in the robots, the inclusion of new faster motors, a description of the robot game play strategy, some operating system remarks which are related to some requirements of our actual system, and the main conclusions related to the work carried out so far. The use of the I2C protocol forced the team to change all the electronic boards and these were completely redesigned in-house, tested and implemented on the robots.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - POSI/ROBO/43892/200

Mobile robot competitions: fostering advances in research, development and education in robotics

Mobile robot competitions are events well suited to experimentation, research and development in many areas concerned with science and technology, ranging from material science to artificial intelligence. Aware of this fact, and for several years now, some Portuguese Universities have been involving some of their Engineering and Computer Science students in such contests, namely those of international level. The performance has been improving both in terms of the results and prizes obtained and the increasingly elaborate technical solutions developed by the teams. The importance recognised in these events has led the authors to submit to the Portuguese Government a proposal for an annual Festival of this kind in Portugal. This paper points out the advances in research, technology and education, which result from this type of events

Individual and coordinated decision for the CAMBADA team

Mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e TelemáticaA coordenação em sistemas multi-robô é um aspecto crucial no futebol robótico. A maneira como cada equipa coordena cada um dos seus robôs em acções cooperativas define a base da sua estratégia. Este trabalho tem como foco o desenvolvimento da coordenação e estratégia da equipa CAMBADA. CAMBADA é a equipa de futebol robótico da modalidade RoboCup Middle Size League da Universidade de Aveiro. Foi desenvolvida pelo grupo ATRI, pertencente µa unidade de investigação IEETA. O presente trabalho baseia-se em trabalho desenvolvido anteriormente, tentando melhorar o desempenho da equipa. Cada robô da equipa CAMBADA é um agente independente e autónomo capaz de coordenar as suas acções com os colegas de equipa através da comunicação e da partilha de informação. O comportamento de cada robô deverá ser integrado na estratégia global da equipa, resultando assim em acções cooperativas de todos os robôs. Isto é conseguido através do uso de papeis(roles) e comportamentos(behaviours) que definem a atitude de cada robô e as acções que daí resultam. Novos papeis foram desenvolvidos para complementar a estratégia de equipa, e alguns dos papeis existentes foram melhorados. Também foram efectuadas melhorias em alguns dos comportamentos existentes. É efectu- ada a descrição de cada um destes papeis e comportamentos, assim como as alterações efectuadas. O trabalho desenvolvido foi testado nas competições do Robótica 2008 (o desenvolvimento não estava ainda concluído) e por fim nas competições do RoboCup'2008. A participação da equipa no RoboCup'2008 é analisada e discutida. A equipa consagrou-se campeã mundial, vencendo a competição da Middle Size League do RoboCup'2008 em Suzhou, China. ABSTRACT: Multi-robot coordination is one crucial aspect in robotic soccer. The way each team coordinates its individual robots into cooperative global actions define the foundation of its strategy. CAMBADA is the RoboCup Middle Size League robotic soccer team of the University of Aveiro. It was created by the ATRI group, part of the IEETA research unit. This work is focused on coordination and strategy development for the CAMBADA team. It is built upon previous work and tries to improve the team performance further. In CAMBADA each robot is an independent agent, it coordinates its actions with its teammates through communication and information exchange. The resulting behaviour of the individual robot should be integrated into the global team strategy, thus resulting in cooperative actions by all the robots. This is done by the use of roles and behaviours that define each robot attitude in the field and resulting individual actions. In this work, new roles were created to add to the team strategy and some of the previous existing roles were improved. Some of the existing behaviours were also improved to better fit the desired goals. Each role and behaviour is described as well as the changes made. The resulting work was put to test in the portuguese Robotica 2008 competition (while still in progress) and finally in the RoboCup'2008 world competitions. The performance of the team in the latter is analysed and discussed. The team achieved the 1st place in the RoboCup'2008 MSL world competitions

SWITCH! Dynamic roles exchange among cooperative robots

In this article we propose a dynamic role exchange algorithm for mobile robots. The heuristics used to alternate among the different roles is based on utility functions. We have utilize the Sony Aibo ERS-7 for testing our design and implementation. The RoboCup 4-legged competition environment has been chosen for proving our wor

Vision, kinematics and game strategy in multi-robot systems like MSL RoboCup

In Multi-Robot systems like the RoboCup football challenge, there are a small number of key issues which are of extreme relevance for the successfulness of the final application. In MSL RoboCup these main issues are three: a) The vision system, which has to be as reliable and fast as possible in order to perceive the necessary entities to carry out the game actions; b) Correct kinematics of the robot, that makes the robots move towards the desired goal in the fastest, shortest and optimized away; c) Game strategy, which needs collaboration and communication between all the agents in the field. Other issues are also important but these three consist of the fundamental ones towards the next step in this challenge which is ball pass between the robots in a controlled way. A team of robots will only be able to pass the ball to another robot only when these three issues are sorted out. This paper describes how these three issues were tackled by the MINHO team and shows their next directions