Project 1: Implement a Simulated Robot Soccer Team

• Due: Tuesday Oct 10

• This project should be completed individually (no groups).

• Download the TeamBots software.

• Description of the project:
  Open questions in multirobot research include issues like the benefits of communication, cooperation and learning, and whether team members should specialize or be homogeneous. In this project, you will explore the last question.

  Soccer is a good task for multi-robot investigations. First, it involves cooperation and competition. Second, compared to many robot tasks, performance is easy to measure.

  Your task for this project is to develop a homogeneous multi-robot soccer team for the TeamBots simulation: one in which all the robots' behaviors are identical.

  Later on, in the next project, you will develop a heterogeneous team. You should develop the homogeneous team first, then implement the specialized team as a modification of the homogeneous one. If the teams are substantially similar except for the specialization, we can make stronger statements about the performance advantage or disadvanage of specialization.

  After you've implemented your team, compare its performance against one of the benchmark teams (SchemaDemo) included in the TeamBots package.

• Send the following files to me by email (trb@cs.cmu.edu). Note: please prepend "project1:" to the subject of your email message. This will help me sort files into the right folder.
  • The source for your homogeneous team, call it YourTeamHomo.java, where YourTeam is a clever name.
  • A one page description of your teams in plain text (3 to 4 paragraphs is plenty). Include a results section that reports the score of your team versus the team you modified to design your code (or vs BasicTeam if you wrote your code from scratch), and the score of your team versus SchemaDemo in a (simulated) 10 minute game. Also include one or two paragraph explanation of why you believe your team is better or worse than the others.

• Your grade will be determined, in order of significance, by:
  • The performance of your team. If you designed your team by modifying existing code (which is OK), your team should be able to defeat the existing team. If you can do that, you will get at least a B.
  • The creativity of your solution. You may base your team on existing code, but your team should include some kind of clever improvement, not just a change of parameters.
  • Your analysis of why your team performs better or worse than another.