Biomimetic control architecture for robotic cooperative tasks

This article proposes some control algorithms to be applied to the MIROSOT robot league architecture. The MIROSOT league soccer game concept is fairly simple: two teams of robots, with 3---5 robots per side, play football autonomously. The ball that the teams play with is an orange golf ball. Above the pitch is a machine vision camera running at 60 frames per second. This camera is linked to a server, which calculates the positions and velocities of each of the robots and the ball, and then determines what each robot should be doing. These instructions are then communicated to the robots over wireless links. In order to develop an efficient control strategy and architecture, the robots have to use strategies from the real human soccer game. Using the software Simi Scout, a suitable analysis of tactics can be extracted from the games. After analyzing the soccer game, a number of attributes are specified and then embedded at different levels. The specified attributes are interconnected, and the analysis of the game is processed for optimization. Using this information, the robot program is adapted and experimental tests/games are played. We comment on the results, and propose an improved control architecture based on practical results.