Dynamic positioning method based on dominant region diagram to realize successful cooperative play

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new technique to compute, in real time, the positions of robots in a cooperative play such as the pass-and-shoot play. To evaluate the positioning of the robot, we use the Dominant Region (DR) diagram, which is a kind of a Voronoi diagram. In the DR diagram, the soccer field is divided into regions, each of which shows an area that a robot can reach faster than the other robots. This division is based on the time of arrival while the division by the Voronoi diagram is based on the distance of arrival. Though the DR diagram plays a primary role in the positioning of the robots, it has a serious problem of taking much computation time. To overcome this problem, we show an approximate calculation procedure to obtain the DR diagram, which realizes the real time computation, i.e. a computation within a frame time. Applying the approximate dominant diagram to the positioning of the robots for the pass play, we show, by the simulation study, the DR diagram can be calculated in real time, an appropriate position for the pass play can be obtained. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.