Evolutionary Multi-Agent Robotic Systems (E-MARS): From a Robot Soccer Perspective

This paper brieey deals with the Evolutionary Multi-Agent Robotic System and disccusses the robot soccer platform as its test bed. Though simulator based robot soccer systems and maze contests were in exsitence for a long time, the Micro-Robot World Cup Soccer Tournament (MiroSot) initiated in Korea is one of its rst kinds. The rst and second MiroSot competitions were held in Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), in 1996 and 1997 respectively. The robots used in MiroSot are small in size (7.5cm 7.5cm 7.5cm), fully/semi autonomous and without any human operators. MiroSot involves multiple robots that need to collaborate in an adversarial environment to achieve spe-ciic objectives. In multi-robot systems the environment's dynamics can be determined by other robots in addition to the uncertainty that may be inherent in the domain. They have dynamic environments as other robots intentionally aaect the environment in unpredictable ways. The key aspect being the need for robots not only to control themselves , but also to track and control the ball which is a passive part of the environment. The interesting theoretical issue behind MiroSot experiments is the use of soccer as a prototype example of a complex, adaptive system. The author participated as a joint Indo-Korean team in MiroSot'97. A Federational of International Robot-soccer Association (FIRA) was formed on June 5th, 1997 to establish a science and technology world cup and FIRA will host the Robot World Cup'98 in Paris along with FIFA World Cup France.