Autonomous Soccer Robots

The Robocup 97 competition provides an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the techniques and methods of artificial intelligence, autonomous agents and computer vision. On a soccer field the core capabilities a player must have are to navigate the field, track the ball and other agents, recognize the difference between agents, collaborate with other agents, and hit the ball in the correct direction. USC's Dreamteam of robots can be described as a group of mobile autonomous agents collaborating in a rapidly changing environment. The key characteristic of this team is that each soccer robot is an autonomous agent, self-contained with all of its essential capabilities on-board. Our robots share the same general architecture and basic hardware, but they have integrated abilities to play different roles (goalkeeper, defender or forward) and utilize different strategies in their behavior. Our philosophy in building these robots is to use the least possible sophistication to make them as robust as possible. In the 1997 RoboCup competition, the Dreamteam played well and won the world championship in the middlesized robot league.