An Elementary Communication Framework for Open Co-operative RoboCup Soccer Teams

Abstract

One of the present day challenges in RoboCup is the development of Open Cooperative teams, where different research labs join efforts to build a common team. In RoboCup Middle-size League, some teams were confronted with a pairwise cooperation scenario in order to qualify to the competition. Such teams bring together robots with heterogeneous hardware, architectures and control software, which hinders straightforward cooperation. The robots in these teams might cooperate through a-priori strategic knowledge and structured communication during the game. This paper presents the kernel of a communication framework, defining a robotic soccer vocabulary, as well as rules to manage communication.