Humanoid soccer
serves as benchmark problem for artificial intelligence research and
robotics. Every year, more teams are competing, e.g., in the RoboCup
Humanoid league. As the robots manage the basic skills of walking,
kicking, and getting up better, teams can focus on soccer skills and
team coordination. The complexity of soccer behaviors and team play
calls for structured behavior engineering.
In this paper, we describe the design of the behavior control software
for the Humanoid League team NimbRo. The control software is based
on a framework that supports a hierarchy of reactive behaviors. It is
structured both as an agent hierarchy (joint -- body part -- player --
team) and as a time hierarchy. The speed of sensors, behaviors, and
actuators decreases when moving up in the hierarchy. The lowest levels
of this framework contain position control of individual joints and
kinematic interfaces for body parts. At the next level, basic skills
are implemented. These are used by soccer behaviors like searching for
the ball, approaching the ball, avoiding obstacles, and defending the
goal. Finally, on the tactical level, the robots communicate via a
wireless network to negotiate roles and use allocentric information to
configure the soccer behaviors.
Our robots won all humanoid soccer competitions of RoboCup 2007, which took place in Atlanta, GA.
Full paper: Humanoids07_Hierarchical_Reactive_Control.pdf