PackHunter

A Project by Nick Trienens

Movies of PackHunter in action can be located on the downloads page.

a pair of bots wandering together

The goal of the PackHunter behavior is to include an array of high level team behaviors in to a single bot. This bot has two "modes". First, the bots can run around a level and simply gather into groups and wander the levels in packs; this adds the advantage of numbers. Second, the bots are designed to have behaviors that can be dynamically tasked; some example behaviors are:

Should I Lead
Should I follow a leader
When leading:	Goto a choosen waypoint
	Hold a choosen waypoint

This allow this dynamic tasking, we developed a web front end interface to the bots. The ultimate goal of this portion of the project was to have a bot that could show a wider set of behaviors without having to manually switch behavior DLLs. This new behavior was programmed in GRL and tests many new features of the bot programming interface, specifically the inter-bot communications system based on the HIVEMind concept.

four bots wandering together

Using the bot communication system allow the bots set an array of integers, floats, and boolean values. Once set any bot can read the value out of that array position. this allows the pack hunter to set and share information with it's teammates; allowing the bots to choose leaders dynamically, informing each other of enemy positions and sharing vital information such as weapons, health, or current odometry. The sharing of information lets the bots act as a closely coordinated pack and improves their killing efficiency.

A group of bots guarding a waypoint. The Pack Leader for each group squats.

n-trienens@northwestern.edu