Adam Overholtzer presents

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Adam Overholtzer presents
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ROBOCOP
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Err
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RoboCup
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RoboCupThe Robot World Cup Initiative

• http//www.robocup.org
• Kitano, Asada, Kuniyoshi, Noda, Osawa

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RoboCups Ultimate Goooooooooooooooooal!!

• By mid-21st century, a team of fully autonomous
  humanoid robot soccer players shall win a soccer
  game against the most recent World Cup champions
  while fully complying with the official rules of
  the FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football
  Association).

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What is RoboCup?

• an international research and education
  initiative
• an attempt to foster AI and intelligent robotics
  research by providing a standard problem where
  wide range of technologies can be integrated and
  examined, as well as being used for integrated
  project-oriented education
• for this purpose, a soccer game was chosen as the
  primary domain
• Why Soccer?
• RoboCup is a task for a team of multiple
  fast-moving robots under a dynamic environment
• in order for a robot team to actually play
  soccer, various technologies must be
  incorporated, such as autonomous agents,
  multi-agent collaboration, strategy acquisition,
  and real-time reasoning

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A New Standard Problem?

• a standard problem is a clearly-defined,
  realistic and affordable challenge that can be
  used to evaluate and compare various algorithms,
  theories, and architectures
• Turing proposed chess as a standard problem for
  AI (because chess is hard)
• the authors propose that RoboCup should be a new
  standard problem for intelligent robotics

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A New Standard ProblemWhy RoboCup?
Well, Deep Blue already defeated human Grand
Master Garry Kasparov. The chess problem is
(virtually) solved and has become too simple to
spur innovation, whereas RoboCup is cutting-edge
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Standard ProblemsCriticisms and Responses

• standard problems are often abstract tasks and
  thus they ignore essential difficulties of real
  world problem solving
• however, solving any real world problem must
  involve domain-specific restraints
• additionally, work on real world systems is far
  too expensive for many groups

RoboCup is designed to meet the need of handling
real world complexity, though in a limited
environment, while maintaining an affordable
problem size and research cost.
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Research Issues Robot Design

• existing robots have been designed to perform
  mostly single behavior actions, such as pushing,
  kicking, juggling, etc.

• a RoboCup player would need to be able to perform
  multiple subtasks such as shooting and passing,
  while also avoiding opponents
• such a multitasking robot could be built with
  either (1) many combined single task components
  or (2) a smaller number of components each able
  to perform several subtasks
• approach 2 seems preferable, since a player would
  need to be compact and quick
• ideally the robots would be humanoid, though this
  is obviously a long term goal

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Research Issues Sensors

• sensors need to provide visual representation of
  the world and information about the results of
  the robots actions
• Computer Vision researchers seek to convert 2-D
  sensor data into complex 3-D geometry, but this
  is slow and processor-intensive
• RoboCup players need a simpler and faster vision
  system so player can react in real time
• other possible sensing devices for detecting
  information not provided by sight include sonar,
  touch, and force/torque sensors

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Research Issues Learning

• each player has to be able to perform one of
  several behaviors depending on the current
  situation
• considering the uncertainties of RoboCups
  dynamic and nondeterministic environment,
  programming behaviors for every situation seems
  unfeasible
• thus, reinforcement learning seems promising
  because the robots can evolve advanced behaviors
  with little pre-programmed knowledge
• so far, almost all of the existing applications
  have been done with computer simulations, not
  robots

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Research Issues Learning

• the first step would be to evolve one-on-one
  competition, though this is quite complex because
  the player must take the opponents motions into
  account
• to reduce complexity, task decomposition can be
  used
• some work so far
• Asada et al. proposed a system where the shooting
  and avoiding behaviors are acquired independently
  and coordinated through the learning, though this
  method is slow due to the huge state space needed
• Sahota proposed a reactive deliberation approach
  architecture, though his method requires perfect
  knowledge and RoboCop does now allow for it

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Research Issues Learning

• the ultimate goal would be a many-to-many
  competition, i.e., a full game of soccer
• this would require dynamic team interaction, and
  defining all such collective behaviors seems
  infeasible, so learning them would seem promising
• unfortunately, it is difficult to find simple
  methods for learning collective behaviors, so
  instead you would need to use pattern finding
  methods or a coordination by imitation system
• other issues, such as task representation
  environment modeling are also challenging, so,
  uh, clearly there is lots of good work to be done!

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Research Issues Collaboration

• a soccer game can be viewed as a real time
  multi-agent environment great for distributed
  AI and multi-agent research (like that Ant
  Algorithm stuff)
• each team has a team-wide common goal (to win)
  and these goals are incompatible (i.e., both
  teams cant win)
• a team might have global (team-wide) strategies
  to fulfill this common goal, as well as both
  local and global tactics to achieve subgoals
  (scoring points, blocking an enemy, etc.)
• the opposing team could be seen as a dynamic and
  obstructive environment that can prevent our team
  from achieving its goal

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Research Issues Collaboration

• there are many challenges to overcome
• the environment, i.e. the movements of both
  teams, is highly dynamic
• each players perception is locally limited (no
  global perception or knowledge)
• each player may have a different role
• communication between teammates is limited and so
  a player must be able to act autonomously
• in summary, a soccer team can be viewed as a
  cooper-ative distributed real-time planning
  scheme, embedded in a highly dynamic environment
  and it still aint as bad as real life!

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The Rules of RoboCup

• RoboCup consists of three competitions the real
  robot competition, the software (or simulated)
  robot competition, and the special skills
  competition
• for the real robot competition, the real
  worldness of RoboCup arises from the vast
  complexity of the overall situation due to
  uncertainty and uncontrollability in the
  structures and functions of the real robots along
  with real physical phenomena
• therefore the authors have aimed for minimal
  regulations and the simplest possible environment
  in the real robot competitions

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Rules of RoboCup Real Robots

• for both the small and medium sized real robot
  leagues, the size and structure of the
  environment, as well as the number of players, is
  predetermined
• the colorings of the ball, field and robots are
  also predetermined so robots can be designed
  accordingly
• fouls are called when a robot intentionally
  attacks another robot, or when a robot holds the
  ball or crowds the defense zone

The field for small robots.
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Rules of RoboCup Real Robots

• the Simulation Track for the field of play is
  based on a server-client system where the server
  provides the virtual field and simulates all
  movements
• the simulated environment is extremely
  straightforward, with a 2-D field and players
  represented as circles with simple stepwise
  motion and collision
• a player is only aware of its position relative
  to nearby landmarks, not its absolute position
  on the field
• each player is controlled by a client program
  connected to the Soccer Server and every action,
  including player-to-player communication, is
  handled through the server

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Rules of RoboCup Simulated

• Soccer Server is also used to simulate games
  using client programs as virtual robots, just as
  discussed on the previous slide

• these virtual games are especially useful for
  comparing multi-agent systems without having to
  deal with all the physical limitations of robot
  design
• thus complex player coordination can be developed
  while others develop workable robots

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Rules of RoboCup Special Skills

• in order to fine-tune various advanced physical
  skills, these humanoid robots are designed to
  compete at only one or two key abilities
• this is the newest completion at RoboCup and very
  few groups can afford to compete
• such a robot is needed to accomplish RoboCups
  ultimate goal, but theyve got a long way to go
  see this kicking robot in action!

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In Summary

• RoboCup should be a new standard AI problem
• RoboCup provides rich research issues for a wide
  range of AI and robotics studies
• building a robot soccer team would require
  integration of a broad range of technologies and
  fundamental breakthroughs on some of the key
  issues in agent design
• the authors hope that the RoboCup initiative will
  play a key role in promoting the state-of-the-art
  in AI and robotics research
• someday, robots will win the World Cup and the
  fans will riot in the streets Domo arigato, Mr.
  Roboto!

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Web Sites of Interest

• Main RoboCup Site
• RoboCup Soccer Simulator
• Special Interest Developer Groups
• Multi-agent Learning
• Multi-agent Modeling
• Vision
• Simulation Tools for Real Robots
• Configurable and Modular Robotics
• Lots of Movies by the Carnegie Mellon Team