The Spirit of Bolivia: Complex Behavior Through Minimal Control

The \Spirit of Bolivia" is a robotic soccer team which demonstrates minimally comprehensive team behavior. By this we mean that each member of the team makes progress towards team goals, and obstructs progress of the opponent, by interacting constructively with teammates and in a sportsmanlike manner with opposing players. This complex behavior is achieved with simple on-board processors running very small behavior-based control programs; team behaviors are achieved without explicit communication. Externalization-the use of the environment as its own best model-and tolerance-a bias towards reducing the need for accurate information rather than attempting to recognize or correct noisy information-are the keys to robustness and sophistication of team behavior.