[robocup-legged] 11x11 RoboCup match

[Peter Stone]

Will,

> - Goals
>    I have no idea what width to make the goals.  The goalie is still  
> an AIBO with limited speed, but a goal the size of the legged league  
> goal would look silly.  Making a third size of goal somewhere in  
> between means we make to make another set of goals.  I'd start with  
> mid-size goals, but am open to suggestions.

I think using the mid-size goals is fine.  An Aibo covers about as
much of a mid-size goal as a human covers a real goal.

> - Communications
>    I was planning to have something simple like that used in the  
> rUNSWift/NUBots open challenge last year.  That was a UDP broadcast  
> packet.  Each robot would broadcast:
>    - Its team and player number
>    - Its own location and covariance matrix
>    - Whether the robot can sense the ball, and if so, the ball's mean  
> location and covariance matrix
>      - "sensing the ball" includes both visual sensing and whatever  
> other mechanisms you have to detect the ball, e.g. the mouth or IR  
> sensor during a grab.
>    - The current destination of this robot.  This might be the  
> location of the ball, or a location on the field.
> 
> I don't know that we need much else.  We might want an: "I'm going to  
> kick the ball here", section in the packet.  I wouldn't want too much  
> more than that: Keep It Simple and Stupid.  We didn't used any more  
> than this in our pick-up open challenge last year.  Teams that want  
> to use more certainly could - amongst those robots using that code base.

What about some sense of role or formation?  Do you envision assigning
the robots ahead of time to be defenders, midfielders, and forwards?
Or is that something they should work out on their own.

Personally, I think it would be a nice challenge to be able to place
the robots down on the field without having pre-assigned roles (except
perhaps for the goalie), and to include enough in the protocol to
enable them to work out positioning.  Perhaps the robots could then
also broadcast a current home location or symbolic position (e.g. left
defense) that would enable this.  It would be up to the robots to try
to make sure that they're not all playing defense or all playing
offense, though.

This is something that we've all thought about in the context of a
single coherent team.  But I think it's a much greater challenge, with
interesting scientific implications, to think about how to get the
robots to self-organize without any previous coordination.

       Peter