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 table 2. Convert image pixels to distinct colors 3. 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 2 nd 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