Jason talks with Peter Stone, director of the Learning Agents Research Group at UT Austin, whose team UT Austin Villa won both the  standard platform league and the 3D simulation league of the RoboCup 2012 competition. They discuss why robot soccer is a good motivating application domain for machine learning, how the RoboCup competition got started and the kinds of teams that participate, the offshoot competition RoboCup Jr, why the machine learning technique known as reinforcement learning works so well in complex, dynamic environments, the role played by game theory in multiagents systems, Peter's involvement in developing autonomous driving vehicles and what it's like to run an artificial intelligence laboratory.

Additional Links:

RoboCup 2012 Semifinals [Video]

RoboCup Finals [Video]

2011 3D Simulation League Highlights [Video]

Soccer and Philosophy: Beautiful Thoughts on the Beautiful Game [Book]