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8.4 Cooperation
Likewise, there are significant advantages to planning and learning strate-
gies, two deliberative functions. Manuela Veloso and Peter Stone have used
RoboCup as a test domain for research in deliberation.

8.4 Cooperation

COOPERATION Cooperation refers to how the robots interact with each other in pursuing a
ACTIVE COOPERATION goal. Robots can show active cooperation by acknowledging one another and
working together. Note that this does not necessarily mean the robots com-
municate with each other. For example, in robot soccer, one robot can pass
the ball to another robot as part of an offensive play. The cooperation does
not require communication—if a robot has the ball, can’t see goal and can see
team mate, then it passes to team mate, but this does require being aware of
the teammates.
NON-ACTIVE More often robots are programmed to exhibit non-active cooperation, where-
COOPERATION by they individually pursue a goal without acknowledging other robots but
cooperation emerges. The choice of cooperation schemes is often influenced
by the sensory capabilities of the robots. Active cooperation requires that
robot be able to distinguish its peer robots from other aspects of the envi-
ronment. In the case of the Georgia Tech entry, each robot was covered in
fluorescent green poster paper easily segmented as a color region. If the
robots had not been green, they would have been treated as obstacles to be
avoided. Non-active cooperation has attracted much interest in the robotics
community because it requires very little sensing or behaviors.
It is easy to think of cooperation in terms of robots working together on a
PHYSICAL task. Another aspect of cooperation is physical cooperation, where the robots
COOPERATION physically aid each other or interact in similar ways. Marsupial robots are
certainly a type of physical cooperation, especially during deployment and
RECONFIGURABLE docking. An even more exciting type of cooperation occurs between reconfig-
ROBOTS urable robots. One of the first such systems was proposed by Toshio Fukuda,
called CEBOT for “celluar robot system.” 31 These are small identical robots
that hook up to form a useful robot. Another aspect of reconfigurable robots
COOPERATIVE is cooperative mobility, where one robot might come over and help another
MOBILITY robot in trouble. Shigeo Hirose simulated robots which could link up with
each other to gain more stability or traction in rough terrain. 67