updated 20 September 2005

The Keep-Away Soccer Problem

: a problem domain for machine learning

The keep-away soccer problem is a scaled-down version of simulated soccer/football for use in optimisation and machine learning algorithm research. The problem is easy to understand and provides a rich and dynamic environment for learning behaviours in an adjustable framework. See a simple visualisation of Keep-Away Soccer by S. Gustafson and more complex simulations of various strategies by P. Stone. To help maintain this resource, send me your contributions and suggestions.

2006

• Keepaway Soccer: From Machine Learning Testbed to Benchmark. Peter Stone, Gregory Kuhlmann, Matthew E. Taylor, and Yaxin Liu. In RoboCup-2005: Robot Soccer World Cup IX, Springer Verlag, Berlin, 2006.

  2005

• Reinforcement Learning for RoboCup-Soccer Keepaway. Peter Stone, Richard S. Sutton, and Gregory Kuhlmann. Adaptive Behavior, 13(3):165-188, 2005.
• Evolving Keepaway Soccer Players through Task Decomposition. S. Whiteson, N. Kohl, R. Miikkulainen, and P. Stone. Evolving Keepaway Soccer Players through Task Decomposition. Machine Learning, 2005.

  2004

• Progress in Learning 3 vs. 2 Keepaway. Gregory Kuhlmann and Peter Stone. In Daniel Polani, Brett Browning, Andrea Bonarini, and Kazuo Yoshida, editors, RoboCup-2003: Robot Soccer World Cup VII, Springer Verlag, Berlin, 2004.
• Empirical Comparison of Incremental Reuse Strategies in Genetic Programming for Keep-Away Soccer. W.H. Hsu, S.J. Harmon, E. Rodriguez and C. Zhong Late Breaking Papers at the 2004 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, 26 July 2004.

  2003

• Evolving Keepaway Soccer Players through Task Decomposition. S. Whiteson, N. Kohl, R. Miikkulainen and P. Stone. In Proceeding of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, LNCS, Vol. 2723, pp. 356-368, Springer-Verlag, 12-16 July 2003.

  2002

• Genetic Programming and Multi-Agent Layered Learning by Reinforcements. W. H. Hsu and S. M. Gustafson. In Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, New York, July, 2002.
• Keepaway Soccer: a Machine Learning Testbed. Peter Stone and Richard S. Sutton. "RoboCup-2001: Robot Soccer World Cup V," A. Birk, S. Coradeschi, S. Tadokoro (eds.), 2002. Springer Verlag, Berlin.
• Learning In RoboCup Keepaway Using Evolutionary Algorithms. A. Di Pietro, L. While and L. Barone. In Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, pp. 1065-1072, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 9-13 July 2002.
• Reinforcement Learning for Keepaway Soccer Problem. S. Valluri and S. Babu K. Department of Computing and Information Sciences, Kansas State University. 2002.

  2001

• Layered Learning in Genetic Programming for a Cooperative Robot Soccer Problem. S. M. Gustafson and W. H. Hsu. In J. F. Miller et al, editors, Proceedings of EuroGP'2001, v. 2038 of LNCS, pages 291--301, Lake Como, Italy, 18-20 April 2001. Springer-Verlag.
• Reinforcement Learning for 3 vs. 2 Keepaway. Stone, P., Sutton, R.S., Singh, S. In ``RoboCup-2000: Robot Soccer World Cup IV'', P. Stone, T. Balch, and G. Kraetszchmar, Eds., Springer Verlag, 2001.
• Genetic Programming for Layered Learning of Multi-agent Tasks. W. H. Hsu and S. M. Gustafson. In Late-Breaking Papers of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2001), San Francisco, CA, June, 2001.
• KaBaGe-RL: Kanerva-based Generalisation and Reinforcement Learning for Possession Football. Kostiadis K. and Hu H. Proceedings IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots & Systems (IROS 2001), Hawaii, October 2001.

  2000

• Genetic Programming for Strategy Learning in Soccer Playing Agents: A KDD-Based Architecture. S. M. Gustafson and W. H. Hsu. In C. Ryan et. al, Graduate Student Workshop, pages 277-280, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 8 July 2000
• Layered Learning in Genetic Programming for a Co-operative Robot Soccer Problem. S. M. Gustafson. Master Thesis. Kansas State University. December 2000.
• Keeping the Ball from CMUnited-99. Peter Stone and David McAllester. "RoboCup-2000: Robot Soccer World Cup IV," P. Stone, T. Balch, G. Kreatzschmarr (eds.), 2001. Springer Verlag, Berlin.

• P. Stone's Simulations
• S. Gustasfon's Simple Visualisation
• S. Gustafson's Keep-Away Soccer Code
• Teambots and Soccerbots
• Robocup and Resources (more sofware)
• The RoboCup Soccer Simulator
• Peter Stone's robotic soccer resources
• MASON implements keep-away soccer
• ECJ interfaces with Soccerbots
• Keep-away in Soccerserver (hopefully coming soon)

Keep-away Soccer Rearchers (alphabetical):

• Luigi Barone
• Anthony Di Pietro
• Steven Gustafson
• Huosheng Hu
• William Hsu and the KDD Lab
• Peter Stone
• Richard Sutton