The RoboCup 2013 drop-in player challenges: a testbed for ad hoc teamwork

Abstract

Ad hoc teamwork has recently been introduced as a general challenge for AI and especially multiagent systems [15]. The goal is to en-able autonomous agents to band together with previously unknown teammates towards a common goal: collaboration without pre-coordination. While research to this point has focused mainly on theoretical treatments and empirical studies in relatively simple domains, the long-term vision has always been to enable robots or other autonomous agents to exhibit the sort of flexibility and adaptability on complex tasks that people do, for example when they play games of “pick-up” basketball or soccer. This paper chronicles the first evaluation of autonomous robots doing just that: playing pick-up soccer. Specifically, in June 2013, the authors helped organize a “drop-in player challenge” in three different leagues at the international RoboCup competition. In all cases, the agents were put on teams with no pre-coordination. This paper documents the structure of the challenge, describes some of the strategies used by participants, and analyzes the results.