Communication and Coordination Among Heterogeneous Mid-Size Players: ART99

Distributed coordination among robotic soccer agents has been considered in the recent years within the framework offered by the RoboCup competitions, mostly in the simulation and F-180 leagues. In this paper we describe the methods and the results achieved in coordinating the players of the ART team participating in the F-2000 league. The team is formed by several heterogeneous robots having different mechanics, different sensors, different control software, and, in general, different abilities for playing soccer. The coordination framework we have developed has been successfully applied during the 1999 official competitions allowing both for a significant improvement of the overall team performance and for a complete interchangeability of all the robots