(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:

Prioritized Role Assignment for Marking

Patrick MacAlpine and Peter Stone

To appear in the Proceedings of the RoboCup International Symposium (RoboCup 2016) in Leipzig, Germany, July 2016.

The full paper can be found here.
This page provides information on a marking system incorporating SCRAM prioritized role assignment used by the UT Austin Villa RoboCup 3D simulation team.

Role Assignment Functions

Different role assignment functions mapping robots (yellow/red circles) to both high priority target locations (orange squares) and normal target locations (green squares). Target locations and initial robot positions are sampled from a uniform random distribution.

Note that the SCRAM role assignment functions using both the large priority value P and priority distance D for prioritization always complete the makespan for reaching the high priority target positions in the shortest amount of time. The functions using just P and not D experience robots colliding with each other, however the functions using both P+D as well as the SCRAM role assignment functions without prioritization (no P or D) avoid collisions.



Role Assignment Functions
Yellow circle robots moving to orange square high priority targets and green square normal targets. When robots collide they turn red. When all high priority targets are reached (a robot assigned to the target is within D of the target) the background is changed to orange, and then when all robots have reached their target locations (the makespan is completed) the background is changed to green. Paths traveled by robots are shown in purple, however if the target a robot is assigned to changes (both from switching a robot assigned to a high priority target and dynamic inconsistency) the path of that robot is changed to light blue.
Download video: mp4

Marking System

The marking system implemented by the UT Austin Villa team is a sequential process encompassing the following steps:
1. Decide which players to mark
2. Select which roles to use for marking purposes
3. Use prioritized role assignment to assign players to positions

The following videos demonstrate using and not using the marking system against different opponents. In the videos opponent agents selected to be marked are circled in yellow. The white dot is the ball, green dots represent target formation positions, and purple dots represent target formation positions that have been selected to be replaced by the orange dot marking positions. Orange lines indicate agents assigned to marking positions and the red line shows the agent assigned to go to the ball.



Not Marking Against FCPortugal Kickoff

Not marking allows for an opponent to run forward and receive a pass in an open position to score a goal.
Download video: (mp4)





Marking Not Prioritized Against FCPortugal Kickoff

Not using prioritization with marking results in a player assigned to mark an opponent being too far away from that assigned opponent to prevent the opponent from scoring a goal.
Download video: (mp4)





Prioritized Marking Against FCPortugal Kickoff

Prioritized marking prevents an opponent from receiving a pass in an open position to score a goal.
Download video: (mp4)




Not Marking Against UTAustinVilla Kickoff

Not marking allows for opponents to run forward and receive a pass in an open position to score a goal.
Download video: (mp4)





Prioritized Marking Against UTAustinVilla Kickoff

Prioritized marking prevents opponents from receiving a pass in an open position to score a goal.
Download video: (mp4)




Not Marking Against UTAustinVilla Corner Kick

Not marking allows for opponents to be in open positions to receive a pass and score a goal.
Download video: (mp4)





Marking Not Prioritized Against UTAustinVilla Corner KIck

Not using prioritization with marking results in a player assigned to mark an opponent being too far away from that assigned opponent to prevent the opponent from receiving a pass and scoring a goal.
Download video: (mp4)





Prioritized Marking Against UTAustinVilla Corner Kick

Prioritized marking prevents opponents from receiving a pass in open positions to score a goal. As no teammates of the opponent player taking the corner kick are open the opponent player just kicks the ball to a position in front of the goal.
Download video: (mp4)

For any questions, please contact Patrick MacAlpine.