英文资料及中文翻译

英文资料及中文翻译

Development of a multi-agent system for robot soccer game

一、Introduction

As modern industrial society progresses, the needs for useful robots are growing. Especially, mobile robots are special issue that gradually expands its realm in industrialand studying topics. Researches on mobile robots have been mainly concentrated on single mobile robot. But, the development of multi-agent system is strongly needed by the growth of complexity of tasks for robots to perform.

The multi-agent systems have been studied by many researchers[l-3]. Generally, multi-agent system is defined as the system composed of more than 2 robots [4] and performs the given task by cooperation. The system has some different factors compared with single robot system. First, the environment for robots to confront is dynamic. In multi-agent system, the robots themselves constitute dynamic environment, because each robot should recognize the other robots as moving obstacles. Many previous researches on mobile robots assume that the environment is static, even for the researches on single mobile robot[5,6]. Second, since the system performs given task by cooperation, it is necessary to make overall system plan forroles of robots. One of the obvious characteristics of the multi-agent system is cooperation - for example, 4-5 robots carry furniture [7]. To cooperate one another, the changes of robots position must be predictable. There are some ways to know the robots position. For example, robots communicate their position one after another, or a supervisor detects robots' position and transmits them to robots. It is related to communication problem. Third, each component of the system such as robots, a supervisor, sensors, communication equipment is well developed, because they influence the overall system performance. Also, it is necessary to adopt appropriate architecture.

Robot soccer is an interesting domain for studying the multi-agent system. The players must work together: It means a sort of cooperation. Also, they play the game in dynamic environment: predictable and unpredictable environment - our robots and opponent's robots, respectively. The main object is to put the ball in opponent's goal as frequently as possible in presence of opponent's robots which have the same task. So, according to a situation, our robots decide which action they take -defense or offense, how they work and so on. In this point, the system needs real-time sensing, quick decision making and fast behaviors. It is related to system architecture and algorithms. As described above , soccer game includes many characteristics of multi-agent system and is abundant in applying AI techniques.

One of the advantages of robot soccer game is direct comparison of different systems. Many robot soccer systems are gathered in some competitions. We participated in a Soccer robot competition in Taejon, Korea called MIROSOT96 [8]. MIROSOT makes some rules. The rules describe precise specification for soccer game. The playground is rectangular with its length 130cm, its width 90cm. An orange golf ball is selected as the play ball. The size of a robot is restricted within 7.5*7.5*7.5cm. One team consists of three robots. We purpose to make soccer system with three robots.

In this paper, we explain some factors to be considered in establishing complete system. First, since the system architecture is very important, we decide the overall system as a centralized on-line system on the basis of surveys of multi-agent systems. Second, the overall system can be divided into three parts - A robot, communication and vision system. We describe the specifications of components of each part and the reasons to decide them. It would be helpful for later improvement.