25,972 research outputs found
Evolution of a robotic soccer player
Robotic soccer is a complex domain where, rather than hand-coding computer programs to control
the players, it is possible to create them through evolutionary methods. This has been successfully
done before by using genetic programming with high-level genes. Such an approach is, however,
limiting. This work attempts to reduce that limit by evolving control programs using genetic
programming with low-level nodes
Dynamic Structures for Evolving Tactics and Strategies in Team Robotics
The autonomous robot systems of the future will be teams of robots with complementary specialisms. At any instant robot interactions determine relational structures, and sequences of these structures describe the team dynamics as trajectories through space and time. These structures can be represented in algebraic forms that are realizable as dynamic multilevel data structures within individual robots, as the basis of emergent team data structures. Such formalisms are necessary for robots to learn new individual and collective behaviours. The theory is illustrated by the example of robot soccer where robot interactions create structures and trajectories essential to the evolution of new tactics and strategies in a changing environment
The wider context of performance analysis and it application in the football coaching process
The evolving role of PA and the associated proliferation of positions and internships within high performance sport has driven consideration for a change, or at least a broadening, of emphasis for use of PA analysis. In order to explore the evolution of PA from both an academic and practitioner perspective this paper considers the wider conceptual use of PA analysis. In establishing this, the paper has 4 key aims: (1) To establish working definitions of PA and where it sits within the contemporary sports science and coaching process continuum; (2) To consider how PA is currently used in relation to data generation; (3) To explore how PA could be used to ensure transfer of information, and; (4) To give consideration to the practical constrains potentially faced by coach and analyst when implementing PA strategies in the future
The Advantage of Playing Home in NBA: Microscopic, Team-Specific and Evolving Features
The idea that the success rate of a team increases when playing home is
broadly accepted and documented for a wide variety of sports. Investigations on
the so-called home advantage phenomenon date back to the 70's and every since
has attracted the attention of scholars and sport enthusiasts. These studies
have been mainly focused on identifying the phenomenon and trying to correlate
it with external factors such as crowd noise and referee bias. Much less is
known about the effects of home advantage in the microscopic dynamics of the
game (within the game) or possible team-specific and evolving features of this
phenomenon. Here we present a detailed study of these previous features in the
National Basketball Association (NBA). By analyzing play-by-play events of more
than sixteen thousand games that span thirteen NBA seasons, we have found that
home advantage affects the microscopic dynamics of the game by increasing the
scoring rates and decreasing the time intervals between scores of teams playing
home. We verified that these two features are different among the NBA teams,
for instance, the scoring rate of the Cleveland Cavaliers team is increased
0.16 points per minute (on average the seasons 2004-05 to 2013-14) when playing
home, whereas for the New Jersey Nets (now the Brooklyn Nets) this rate
increases in only 0.04 points per minute. We further observed that these
microscopic features have evolved over time in a non-trivial manner when
analyzing the results team-by-team. However, after averaging over all teams
some regularities emerge; in particular, we noticed that the average
differences in the scoring rates and in the characteristic times (related to
the time intervals between scores) have slightly decreased over time,
suggesting a weakening of the phenomenon.Comment: Accepted for publication in PLoS ON
Cardiac evaluation of young athletes: Time for a risk-based approach?
Pre-participation cardiovascular screening (PPCS) is recommended by several scientific and sporting organizations on the premise that early detection of cardiac disease provides a platform for individualized risk assessment and management; which has been proven to lower mortality rates for certain conditions associated with sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) and sudden cardiac death (SCD). What constitutes the most effective strategy for PPCS of young athletes remains a topic of considerable debate. The addition of the electrocardiogram (ECG) to the medical history and physical examination undoubtedly enhances early detection of disease, which meets the primary objective of PPCS. The benefit of enhanced sensitivity must be carefully balanced against the risk of potential harm through increased false-positive findings, costly downstream investigations, and unnecessary restriction/disqualification from competitive sports. To mitigate this risk, it is essential that ECG-based PPCS programs are implemented by institutions with a strong infrastructure and by physicians appropriately trained in modern ECG standards with adequate cardiology resources to guide downstream investigations. While PPCS is compulsory for most competitive athletes, the current debate surrounding ECG-based programs exists in a binary form; whereby ECG screening is mandated for all competitive athletes or none at all. This polarized approach fails to consider individualized patient risk and the available sports cardiology resources. The limitations of a uniform approach are highlighted by evolving data, which suggest that athletes display a differential risk profile for SCA/SCD, which is influenced by age, sex, ethnicity, sporting discipline, and standard of play. Evaluation of the etiology of SCA/SCD within high-risk populations reveals a disproportionately higher prevalence of ECG-detectable conditions. Selective ECG screening using a risk-based approach may, therefore, offer a more cost-effective and feasible approach to PPCS in the setting of limited sports cardiology resources, although this approach is not without important ethical considerations
Using network science to analyze football passing networks: dynamics, space, time and the multilayer nature of the game
From the diversity of applications of Network Science, in this Opinion Paper
we are concerned about its potential to analyze one of the most extended group
sports: Football (soccer in U.S. terminology). As we will see, Network Science
allows addressing different aspects of the team organization and performance
not captured by classical analyses based on the performance of individual
players. The reason behind relies on the complex nature of the game, which,
paraphrasing the foundational paradigm of complexity sciences "can not be
analyzed by looking at its components (i.e., players) individually but, on the
contrary, considering the system as a whole" or, in the classical words of
after-match interviews "it's not just me, it's the team".Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur
Performance evaluation of a distributed integrative architecture for robotics
The eld of robotics employs a vast amount of coupled sub-systems. These need to interact
cooperatively and concurrently in order to yield the desired results. Some hybrid algorithms
also require intensive cooperative interactions internally. The architecture proposed lends it-
self amenable to problem domains that require rigorous calculations that are usually impeded
by the capacity of a single machine, and incompatibility issues between software computing
elements. Implementations are abstracted away from the physical hardware for ease of de-
velopment and competition in simulation leagues. Monolithic developments are complex, and
the desire for decoupled architectures arises. Decoupling also lowers the threshold for using
distributed and parallel resources. The ability to re-use and re-combine components on de-
mand, therefore is essential, while maintaining the necessary degree of interaction. For this
reason we propose to build software components on top of a Service Oriented Architecture
(SOA) using Web Services. An additional bene t is platform independence regarding both
the operating system and the implementation language. The robot soccer platform as well
as the associated simulation leagues are the target domain for the development. Furthermore
are machine vision and remote process control related portions of the architecture currently
in development and testing for industrial environments. We provide numerical data based on
the Python frameworks ZSI and SOAPpy undermining the suitability of this approach for the
eld of robotics. Response times of signi cantly less than 50 ms even for fully interpreted,
dynamic languages provides hard information showing the feasibility of Web Services based
SOAs even in time critical robotic applications
- …