(logo by Janette Forte)
This is the official site of the UT Austin Villa 3D Simulation team from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin.

This web page provides supplementary material to the following paper:

Positioning to Win: A Dynamic Role Assignment and Formation Positioning System

Patrick MacAlpine, Francisco Barrera, and Peter Stone

Published in the Proceedings of the RoboCup International Symposium (RoboCup 2012) in Mexico City, Mexico, July 2012.

The full paper can be found here.

Beginning in 2013 the team has incorporated polynomial time SCRAM (Scaleable Collision-avoiding Role Assignment with Minimal-makespan) algorithms to assign agents to target locations.
This page provides information on a dynamic role assignment and formation positioning system which was an important component in UT Austin Villa winning the 2011 RoboCup 3D simulation competition. Results from the competition, including videos of game action, are linked off the UT Austin Villa homepage. The remainder of this page focuses only on the positioning system.

For the 2011 RoboCup 3D simulation competition UT Austin Villa used a dynamic role assignment and formation positioning system in order to coordinate movement of the team. Each agent is assigned to a role (position) so as to minimize the longest distance any agent has to travel. Positions within a set formation are determined based on predefined offsets from the ball. Calculation of the optimal mapping of agents to positions is computed efficiently through the use of dynamic programming. The agents synchronize their choice of the mapping to follow through the use of a simple voting system and the simulator's provided communication channel. Below is a video of the system in action.


Role Assignment and Formation Positioning System

Each position is shown as a color-coded number corresponding to the agent's uniform number assigned to that position. Agents update their role assignments and move to new positions as the ball or an agent is beamed (moved) to a new location.
Download video: mp4

For any questions, please contact Patrick MacAlpine.