Generating a dataset for learning setplays from demonstration

Abstract

Abstract Coordination is an important requirement for most Multiagent Systems. A setplay is a particular instance of a coordinated plan for multi-robot systems in collective sports. Setplays are usually designed by robotics specialists using some existing tools, like the SPlanner, or by hand-coding. This work presents recent improvements to the Strategy Planner (SPlanner) and its corresponding FCPortugal Setplays Framework (FSF) to provide sophisticated setplays. This toolkit is useful to design strategic plans for robotic soccer teams as a particular case of Multi-Agent Systems (MASs). The new enhancements enable more realistic setplays, including, but not limited to, the definition of better pass strategies and defensive setplays. The enhanced tool is used to populate a dataset with demonstrations made by soccer experts and used in a Learning from Demonstration (LfD) approach to allow robotic soccer teams to learn new setplays. A new demonstration mode in the RoboCup Soccer Simulation 3D (SSIM3D) viewer RoboViz was also introduced to integrate this tool with SPlanner. Domain experts can use this set of tools to capture a specific scene in a game in RoboViz and use it as an initial step for a new setplay recommendation in SPlanner. The resulting dataset is organized into fuzzy clusters to be used in a reinforcement learning strategy. This paper describes the whole process. Article Highlights This paper’s main contribution is generating a dataset of setplays to support learning from demonstration in robotic soccer. A set of new features were added to the Strategic Planner(SPlanner) to enable the design of more realistic setplays. The official RoboCup viewer (Roboviz) was integrated with SPlanner using a new demonstration mode.