Interactive and Collaborative Visualization of Robot Soccer

Robot soccer is a standard problem used in Artiicial Intelligence for research on cooperating autonomous robots. This paper shows that simulation of robot soccer also is an excellent application for studying interactive and collaborative visualization. We have implemented a prototype robot soccer application that simulates a soccer match in real time and allows humans to interact with it in various ways. A human player who is immersed in a CAVE can interact with the simulation in its natural domain, by playing along with the virtual game. Other users (e.g., coaches, spectators) need diierent visualization paradigms and get a 3D overview or a 2D TV-like view, resulting in multi-modal visualization. The application supports distributed collaboration by allowing humans at diierent geographic locations to participate and interact in real time. The paper describes how robot soccer simulation can be used to study interaction, collaboration, and multi-modal visualization, which are relevant for many scientiic applications.