applets/directedKicker.html

   1 <html>
   2 <head>
   3         <title>Directed Kicker Bots</title>
   4         <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../styles.css"/>
   5 </head>
   6 <body>
   7 <div id="content">
   8         <h2>Directed Kicker Bots</h2>
   9         <h3>Agent Algorithm</h3>
  10         <p>
  11                 A directed kicker agent chooses a visible ball at random and
  12                 tries to "kick" it so that the ball will move in the the agent's
  13                 goal direction. The agent calculates the spot on the ball it
  14                 needs to hit to knock the ball in the right direction. If it
  15                 senses that moving directly towards the target spot will
  16                 result in kicking the ball in another direction, the agent
  17                 accelerates around the agent (orthagonal to the vector towards the
  18                 target spot) until it can hit the target spot.
  19         </p>
  20         <h4>Pseudocode</h4>
  21         <div class="pseudocode">
  22 <pre>visibleBalls = {}
  23 for all visibleObjects
  24    if visibleObject is ball
  25       visibleBalls <-- visibleObject
  26 if visibleBalls is not empty
  27    ball = selectRandom(visibleBalls)
  28    targetVector = vectorToBallCenter - (ball.radius + agent.radius) * goalDirection
  29    if dotProduct(targetVector, vectorToBallCenter) > 0
  30       acceleration = targetVector
  31    else
  32       orthagonalToTarget = rotate(targetVector, 90&deg;)
  33       if dotProduct(orthagonalToTarget, goalDirection) > 0
  34          orthagonalToTarget = -1 * orthagonalToTarget
  35       acceleration = orthagonalToTarget
  36 else
  37    set acceleration to zero</pre>
  38         </div>
  39         <h3>Observed Behavior</h3>
  40         <p>
  41                 The agents definitely do organize themselves on the correct
  42                 sides of the ball, and depending on how many agents of which color
  43                 are concentrating on a ball, the ball is moved in the goal
  44                 direction of the team with the majority focused on that ball.
  45         </p>
  46         <p>
  47                 It seems, however, that the agents do a lot more "positioning
  48                 to kick" than actual kicking. They all line up on their
  49                 side of the ball and follow the ball around. This could be good
  50                 for defense in a soccer-style game, but not aggressive enough for
  51                 offense.
  52         </p>
  53         <h3>The Applet</h3>
  54         <applet archive="../dist/appletbots.jar"
  55                 code="appletbots.directedballs.DirectedBallsApplet"
  56                 alt="Directed Balls Applet"
  57                 width="600"
  58                 height="520">
  59                 <div>
  60                         If you see this, you need to either enable java, or install the Sun Java
  61                         Virtual Machine in your browser. To do so,
  62                         <a href="http://java.sun.com/getjava/download.html">click here</a>.
  63                 </div>
  64         </applet>
  65         <h3>Source Code</h3>
  66         <ul>
  67                 <li>
  68                         <a href="../src/DirectedBallsApplet.java.html">DirectedBallsApplet.java</a>
  69                 </li>
  70                 <li>
  71                         <a href="../src/DirectedKicker.java.html">DirectedKicker.java</a>
  72                 </li>
  73         </ul>
  74         <a href="../" class="return">Back to the Applet Bots Home</a>
  75 </div>
  76 <div class="official">
  77         The official version of this file is at <a href="http://applet-bots.sourceforge.net/applets/directedKicker.html">applet-bots.sourceforge.net</a>
  78         <a href="http://sourceforge.net" class="sf-logo"><img border="0" alt="SourceForge.net Logo" src="http://sflogo.sourceforge.net/sflogo.php?group_id=205988&amp;type=1"/></a>
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