Building a Robot Soccer Team

David Cohen and Paul Vernaza

University of Pennsylvania

What is Robocup? International robotics competition

and symposium Goal: By the year 2050,

to develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champion team.

Many different leagues in competition

The Four-Legged League Team composition Rules Field Uniforms Ball Halves Challenges Robots used…

The Sony AIBO

“Robotic Pet”/research platform Construction (deconstruction) Battery, memory stick, wireless

card Sensors, effectors What kinds of sensors and

effectors are present on the AIBO?

Major Challenges

Can you guess what the major challenges are?

We will talk about four of them…

Major Challenges

Vision: making sense of the camera image

Localization: finding out where the dogs are located on the field

Locomotion: teaching a dog to walk Behavior: decision-making and

cooperation

Vision

1. Build a color table2. Convert image pixels to distinct

colors3. Connect the dots to make blobs

Images courtesy of CMU

Localization

What does it give us? Why localization? Humans don’t

have it Beacon-based localization Line-based localization

Locomotion A good walk is omnidirectional,

fast, and stable Teams differ greatly in locomotive

ability Being able to walk fast gives a

team a great advantage Walk is generated using inverse

kinematics

Behavior Consists basically of

telling the dog what to do in different circumstances

Fully autonomous Modeled with a state

machine Important issues include

collaboration, obeying rules, robustness

Robocup 2003 Penn finished 2nd out

of 24 teams Teams from around

the world participated Each team had its

own characteristic strengths and weaknesses (UNSW, Germany, U. of Washington, etc.)

Plans for the Future New robots: ERS-7 Improving walk speed Improving localization

with more natural visual cues

Using AI techniques for behavior

Passing