Task Decomposition and Dynamic Role Assignment for Real-Time Strategic Teamwork - Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University

Task Decomposition and Dynamic Role Assignment for Real-Time Strategic Teamwork

Peter Stone and Manuela Veloso
Workshop Paper, 5th International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL '98), pp. 293 - 308, July, 1998

Abstract

Multi-agent domains consisting of teams of agents that need to collaborate in an adversarial environment offer challenging research opportunities. In this paper, we introduce periodic team synchronization domains, as time-critical environments in which agents act autonomously with limited communication, but they can periodically synchronize in a full-communication setting. We present a team agent structure that allows for an agent to capture and reason about team agreements. We achieve collaboration between agents through the introduction of formations. A formation decomposes the task space defining a set of roles. Homogeneous agents can flexibly switch roles within formations, and agents can change formations dynamically, according to pre-defined triggers to be evaluated at run-time. This flexibility increases the performance of the overall team. Our team structure further includes pre-planning for frequent situations. We fully implemented this approach in the domain of robotic soccer. Our simulator team made it to the semi-finals of the RoboCup-97 competition, in which 29 teams participated. It achieved a total score of 67-9 over six different games, and successfully demonstrated its flexible team structure. Using the same team structure, our small robot team won the RoboCup-97 small-robot competition, in which 4 teams participated. It achieved a total score of 13-1 over 4 games and also demonstrated its flexible team structure.

BibTeX

@workshop{Stone-1998-16707,
author = {Peter Stone and Manuela Veloso},
title = {Task Decomposition and Dynamic Role Assignment for Real-Time Strategic Teamwork},
booktitle = {Proceedings of 5th International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL '98)},
year = {1998},
month = {July},
editor = {Mueller, Singh, and Rao},
pages = {293 - 308},
publisher = {Springer Verlag},
address = {Heidelberg},
}