Projects:2021s2-63311 Robots playing capture the flag

Abstract

Robotics application is getting more popular in recent years. Most robotic system are known for their excellence in handling tasks that require a high level of responsiveness, repetition, and accurate execution. However, the more complicated task, the more inclination for robots to suffer functionally, especially with tasks that involves critical planning and making strategies in advance. To research such tactical tasks, the game capturing the flag is chosen. Capturing the flag is a team-based game that requires the player to capture their opponent’s flag while protecting their own. The team with better strategy and formation will be more likely to achieve victory. With that in mind, this project aims to simulate the game CTF in a software environment to study the ways in which complex and strategic behaviours can be implemented into robots using Python programming.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge the sponsorship of the Defence Science and Technology Group of Australia (DST Group). The credit for great support, helpful feedback and on-going consultation goes to David Hubczenko, Jijoong Kim, Anna Dostovalova and Bradley Fraser. Moreover, the author would also like to express his deepest gratitude towards invaluable guidance and support from project advisors Prof. Cheng-Chew Lim and Dr. Duong D. Nguyen. This project would not have reached this far without their expert recommendations.

Introduction

Motivation

Today, the automation industry is growing rapidly, and robots are becoming more popular. With the development of the robotic industry, the programing algorithm quality becomes crucial in many complex and difficult tasks. With the movement of technology, it is indispensable to carry out more researches about machine learning and strategic decision making so that they can achieve difficult tasks.

Moreover, deep learning machines, or Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been developing rapidly and proven it's reputation in self-learning ability. For instance, the AI machine AlphaGo, developed by Google DeepMind Challenge Match has claimed predominant number of victories (4/5 wins) against 18th time world champion Lee Sedol in Go Chess. It is desired for the researches in the future leads to the development in intelligent machines, which will aid in human's difficult task in the future.

Project Aims

The deliverable of this project is a simulation program, which visualize robots playing the game together, with or without control from human observer. The robots were programmed so that they must obey fundamental physics rules, such as velocity, acceleration. Next, it is essential to define attacking, and defending algorithms so that they can be implemented into the program. The execution of algorithm will need to depend on the game situation. Also, the simulation must consider basic physics constraints that apply to the robot’s movements. For instance, the parameters with maximum velocity, acceleration and stopping acceleration will be analysed and implemented.

Prior Arts

This game challenges the need to build a smart algorithm. In this case, it’s the tactical planning and execution for robots to play capture the flag. The goal is to integration these algorithms into physical robots that play capture the flag, but also where they can be used in a variety of other/different applications. The essence of this project is the strategic algorithm, which will determine how the robots act according to real-time events.

Aquaticus

One of the closest research projects that have done similar research on the same objective is Aquaticus [3]. The project tested the game of CTF with real human and robots on the water surface. The coordinates and movement of the game is recorded and made available on Aquaticus website. However, data is limited, as there had not been many game set to analyse. Meanwhile, a set of large number of simulations is needed to study the behaviour of the robotic players in the game.

Hamilton Jacobi reachability

Another group of researchers have been trying to implement different approaches to game planning on the game of CTF. The research had been successful at that time for the implementation of Hamilton-Jacobi reachability into one of the scenarios in the game CTF. The advantage of this research is to apply Hamilton Jacobi reachability to calculate the possibilities to successfully offend in the game of CTF, depending on different scenarios and achieve victory. However, the idea was abstract, on the paper research without actually simulate a full course game of CTF.

Results

Results of simulation carried out by 20th September 2021: Firstly games such as space invader, space shooter and pong were created so that the project team can be familiar with the simulation environment (python, pycharm & pygame). Then the game pong was used as a platform to create a player vs computer capture the flag game, where the player has to get past robots moving up and down in order to capture the flag. Next, for the ease of gameplay, a code was added to connect a controller to python, and a simple game of moving a box around the screen was created to show the success of this code. This code was then extended to a player vs robot capture the flag game, where the player is controlling a defender, while the robot has an algorithm which calculates and moves in the most direct path to the flag (flag appears randomly in the map on the defenders side).

Conclusion and Future work

Conclusion

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Future work

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References

NGUYEN, DUONG D., et al. "Dynamic Multi-Target Assignment with Decentralised Online Learning to Achieve Multiple Synchronised Goals." 2020 International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics (ICMLC). IEEE, 2020.

Simpson, T., Hull, R., Dadgar, A., Rajagopalan, A., Kim, J.,&Chen, L. (2019). On-board/off-board smooth trajectory control for quadcopters through multi-loop PID tuning. Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, ACRA, 2019-December, [159894]. 

https://ssl.linklings.net/conferences/acra/acra2019_proceedings/views/includes/files/pap148s1-file1.pdf

Hongjun Yu, Peng Shi, Cheng-Chew Lim, Dongzhe Wang. (2019) Formation control for multi-robot systems with collision avoidance. International Journal of Control 92:10, pages 2223-2234.

Yutong Liu, Hongjun Yu, Cheng-Chew Lim&Peng Shi (2017) Steady formation analysis on multi-robot systems, Journal of Control and Decision, 4:1, 12-31, DOI: 10.1080/23307706.2016.1254073

https://www.roboticoncology.com/history-of-robotic-surgery/

https://online.officetimeline.com/app/#/file/2fd73c1d-0f25-439a-87f6-d138e7b8cdf0

Project Team

Student researchers

Kevin Perera
Vu Quang Truong

Supervisors

Dr. Cheng-Chew Lim
Dr. Duong Duc Nguyen
David Hubczenko (DTSG)