RoboCup: New Scientific and Technical Advancements

Enrico PagelloVice-President of the International RoboCup Federation

IAS-Lab

Intelligent Autonomous Systems

The University of The University of PaduaPadua

Presentation Outline

• Why RoboCup

• RoboCup at beginning: 1997-2000

• League organization: old and new

• RoboCup-2003 report• The site, the people, the robots

• Competition results

• RoboCup research at IAS-Lab, in Padua

• Scientific perspective of RoboCup

Why roboCup ? H. Kitano (Ed.), RoboCup: The First Step,

Special Issue of Artificial Intelligence, June 1999

• Landmark Project:– Difficult enough to generate innovations and technical

breakthroughs– Enough feasible to allow a first step– Able to generate technologies that could

meet next generation of industries – Widely appealing and exciting

• Ultimate Goal – To beat the World-champion Human Team by

a Team of 11 Humanoids

RoboCup Soccer : (1/5) The oldest RoboCup standard problem

• Different Leagues provide different research challenges for multi-robot systems in complex environments

• Simulation League

• No Hardware limitations

• Multi-agent coordination and high level strategies

• Small-size League

• Miniaturized Hardware

• Centralized control

• Middle-size League

• Building, maintaining, and programming a team of fully autonomous robots

• High speed moving (>2m/s)

• Large field (12m X 8 m)

• Sensing the environment

• Cooperation abilities

RoboCup Soccer : (2/5) The oldest RoboCup standard problem

• Middle-size League: progresses from 1997 to 2003

USC (USA) - Osaka Univ. (Japan) Nagoya 1997 Isfahan Univ (Iran) - AIS (Germany) Padua 2003

RoboCup Soccer : (3/5) The oldest RoboCup standard problem

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• Four-Legged League

• Stable, reliable and standardized Hardware

• Software development

• Local sensor processing

• Cooperation abilities

RoboCup Soccer : (4/5) The oldest RoboCup standard problem

• Humanoid League• Commercial platforms OR

Home-designed robots

• Today, only limited different ability challenges:

• Walking

• Standing on one leg

• Penalty kick

• Free style

• VERY CHALLENGING !!!

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RoboCup Soccer : (5/5) The oldest RoboCup standard problem

The new RoboCup categories:The Rescue activity

• We chose Urban Search and Rescue (USAR Application) as a secondary domain for RoboCup, because it is a socially significant real-world domain, but also because ...

RoboCup Rescue versus Soccer …

because

• There are certain similarities beween Rescue and Soccer:• unpredictability,

• hard real-time,

• heterogeneous teams,

• emergent cooperation,

• distributed simulation, etc.

• Other USAR features are missing in Soccer:• long-term strategy planning logistic,

• interaction with human agents,

• robot-based map construction,

• sophisticated networking technology,

• 3D odometry, etc

General research issues were introduced into RoboCup since the beginning (1997)

• Each league has its own architectural constraints.

• Research issues are slightly different one to another.

• For simulated leagues;• Teamwork among agents• Agent modelling, from primitive skills to complex ones• Multi-agent learning, for on-line and off-line learning of simple skills, as well as

more complex strategy . . . . .

• For real leagues:• Real-time global or distributed perception from different sensing sources• Individual mechanical skills of the phisical robots• Strategic navigation and actions . . . . .

RoboCup and education:Benefit of RoboCup - The Junior League

• There are large benefits for education from promoting RoboCup among young people

• RoboCup Junior has an important role for the advancement of science and education

RoboCup members RoboCup members The participating universities and

research organizations have been increasing

all over the world year by year

Cambridge Univ.Cambridge Univ.South California UnivSouth California Univ.

Melbourne Univ.Melbourne Univ.NSW Univ.NSW Univ.Queensland Univ.Queensland Univ.

Berlin Free Berlin Free Univ.Univ.Padova Univ.Padova Univ.Uppsala Univ.Uppsala Univ.Essex Univ.Essex Univ.Labo de Robotique de Labo de Robotique de

VersaillesVersailles Roma Univ.Roma Univ.Orebro Univ.Orebro Univ.Humboldt Univ.Humboldt Univ.Porto Univ.Porto Univ.Mainz Univ.Mainz Univ.Osnabrueck Univ.Osnabrueck Univ.Koblenz-landau Koblenz-landau Univ. etc.Univ. etc.

Tokyo Univ.Tokyo Univ.Keio Univ.Keio Univ.Waseda Univ.Waseda Univ.Erato Kitano Erato Kitano ProjectProjectOsaka Univ. Etc.Osaka Univ. Etc.

Auckland Univ. Auckland Univ. etcetc.

Carnegie Carnegie Mellon Univ.Mellon Univ.

Cornell Univ. Cornell Univ. etc.etc.

Beijing Institute Beijing Institute of Tech.of Tech.China Science & China Science & Tech UnivTech Univ.

Sheriff TechSheriff Tech Univ.Univ.India Tech Univ.India Tech Univ. Georgia Tech Georgia Tech

Univ.Univ.Pennsylvania Pennsylvania Univ.Univ.Washington Washington Univ. etc.Univ. etc.

McGill UnivMcGill Univ.

Major universities & Research Organizations

St. Petersburg State Technical St. Petersburg State Technical Univ.Univ.

The RoboCup FederationThe RoboCup Federation

The RoboCup FederationA Non-Profit Organization registered in Switzerland and composed of top AI researchers in the world

Board of Trustee

Executive Committee

Composed of 11 core board members

Composed of persons responsible for each league

Japan NetherlandsItalyUSA France ScandinaviaSingapore Germany

National Committee

Dr. H. Kitano Founding President Sony Co., TokyoJapan

Prof. M. AsadaPresidentOsaka Univ. Japan

Prof. M. VelosoVice PresidentCMU, USA

Prof. E. PagelloVice PresidentPadua Univ., Italy

RoboCup2002 @ Fukuoka-Dome:Middle-size fields and lab area 11,000 sq m

RoboCup2003 @ PadovaFiere:Middle-size fields and lab area: 8.,500 sq m

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Classification of Teams by country @RoboCup2003

Team growth 1997-2003

Junior League:RoboCup 2003 competitions

• This year competition had • One-on-one soccer

• Two-on-two soccer

• Dance

• Rescue

Junior League:RoboCup 2003 dance performances

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• Dance challenge can help to reduce the gender gap, and allow more female students to join RoboCup

Junior League:RoboCup 2003 U-league experiments

• U-League was created in answer to the call of develop stepping stones from RoboCup junior and senior RoboCup Leagues

Junior League:RoboCup 2003 Rescue set

• Junior rescue was redesigned and re-introduced, on 2003, as a miniature version of the NIST Rescue Arenas

• The RCJ Rescue set-up looks almost like a doll’s house, and the robot had to follow a line through the house search for victims