SimSpark { Concepts and Application in the RoboCup 3D Soccer Simulation League Joschka Boedecker1 and Minoru Asada1;2 1Dept. of Adaptive Machine Systems, 2HANDAI Frontier Research Center, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan fjoschka.boedecker,
[email protected] Abstract. Simulators have a long tradition within RoboCup. In the Soccer Simulation League, one of the earliest leagues within RoboCup, traditionally single-purpose robot simulators with high levels of abstrac- tion have been used. These systems proved valuable as tools for mul- tiagent research, but were difficult to extend. Furthermore, there were concerns that research results would not be easily transferable to the real world due to the extensive simplifications. In order to alleviate these problems, a new, more generic, and more realistic robot simulation sys- tem was proposed in the year 2003 and first used in the league's com- petitions in 2004. This paper presents the architecture and concepts of this system, and its application in the RoboCup 3D Soccer Simulation League. Moreover, it presents ongoing and future development plans. 1 Introduction Ever since the early days of RoboCup, simulators have played in important part in it, with the RoboCup Soccer Simulation League being one of the earliest com- petitions in its history [1]. The Soccer server [2] has been used as the simulation platform in this league in order to address research questions in high-level de- cision making and team coordination amongst others. The level of abstraction of the Soccer server has been quite high: the games are simulated in a 2D envi- ronment with simplified physics rules and agent representations.