Revealing Patterns in Team Behaviour

Complex collective phenomena, large scale global§patterns emerging from the interactions of systems§following rules are ubiquitous in nature and of great§interest to scientists. Reductionist approaches§cannot explicate the complexity and dynamics of§global phenomena. Research in non-linear dynamics,§fractal geometry, chaos and complexity has developed§many new tools which act as instruments to probe the§unseen depths of emergent behaviour. Complex systems§consist of individual components which can exhibit§new qualitative, sophisticated collective behaviour§that emerges from their interactions. The technique§developed in this book is derived from successful§approaches used in quantum physics combined with§theoretical ideas distilled from structural§complexity. A virtual simulation and computation§laboratory using a combination of mathematics,§statistics and computing is applied to investigate§robot soccer teams'' dynamics. The laboratory had to§be developed from scratch since this was the first§time robot soccer team dynamics had been investigated§in this way. It is analogous to the approach§physicists take in designing new instruments to§search for theoretical particles.