Man multi-agent interaction in VR: a case study with RoboCup

We discuss the use of virtual reality (VR) techniques for interaction between humans and a multi-agent system in the context of RoboCup. The goal of RoboCup is to let teams of cooperating autonomous agents play a soccer match, using either robots or simulated players. We use RoboCup to study distributed collaborative applications, which allow multiple users at different geographic locations to cooperate, by interacting in real time through a shared simulation program. Our objective is to construct a VR environment in which humans at different locations can play along with a running RoboCup simulation in a natural way. The simulation system consists of the Soccer Server and a set of processes modeling the players. The server keeps track of the state of the game: provides the players with information on the game, and enforces the rules. The players request state information and autonomously calculate a behavior, sending the server commands that consist of accelerations, turns and kicks. The server discretizes time into slots, only one command is executed per time slot. We have developed a 3D visualization system that allows a user in a CAVE to interact with the soccer simulation software