next up previous
Next: Ball Interception Up: Agent Skills Previous: Dribbling

Smart Dribbling

  The basic dribbling takes one parameter that was mentioned above: the dribble angle. Smart dribbling is a skill layered on the basic dribbling skill that decides the best dribble angle based on opponent positions. Intuitively, the agent should keep the ball away from the opponents, so that if an opponent is on the left, the ball is kept on the right, and vice versa.

The agent considers all nearby opponents that it knows about. Each opponent is given a ``vote'' about what the dribble angle should be; each opponent votes for the valid angle tex2html_wrap_inline823 that is farthest from itself. For example, an opponent at 45 degrees, would vote for -90, while an opponent at -120 degrees would vote for 60. Each opponent's vote is weighted by the distance and angle relative to the direction of motion. Closer opponents and opponents more in front of the agent are given more weight (see Figure 5).

Figure 5: The weights for smart dribbling.

Peter Stone
Mon Nov 30 20:08:29 EST 1998