The Autonomous Robot Soccer Teams

expectations that, ironically, remove us somewhat from the real concept they embody. Indeed, the underlying research goes well beyond entertaining soccer fans to the creation of completely autonomous intelligent robots. I am in the fortunate position of pursuing research in artificial intelligence (AI), a fascinating field of research started by Allen Newell and Herb Simon at Carnegie Mellon. In the late 1980s, Allen Newell announced that it was time for the subareas of AI to merge and create “complete intelligence agents” capable of perception, action, and cognition. I fully embraced this challenge as the subject of my research. Robot soccer teams compete in matches called RoboCup, which set itself a challenge of creating a robot team that could beat a human soccer team in the World Cup in 2050. RoboCup competitions are organized in a way that advances the state of the art of AI and robotics. Every year, the leagues are revised and moved closer to reality. The final goal is for robots to coexist with humans in a common physical environment. The research platforms defined for the RoboCup international competitions present many challenges: (1) the environment is only partially observable; (2) the effects of a player’s actions in the presence of opponents are uncertain and difficult to model; and (3) the cycle of perception, cognition, and action must run in real time. Soccer differs from other adversarial Manuela Veloso is professor of

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