Towards collaborative and adversarial learning: a case study in robotic soccer

Soccer is a rich domain for the study of multiagent learning issues. Not only must the players learn low-level skills, but they must also learn to work together and to adapt to the behaviors of different opponents. We are using a robotic soccer system to study these different types of multiagent learning: low-level skills, collaborative, and adversarial. Here we describe in detail our experimental framework. We present a learned, robust, low-level behavior that is necessitated by the multiagent nature of the domain, namely shooting a moving ball. We then discuss the issues that arise as we extend the learning scenario to require collaborative and adversarial learning.