RoboCup Soccer

1
RoboCup Soccer?

• Nidhi Goel
• Course cs575
• Instructor K. V. Bapa Rao

2
How much intelligence do you need to play soccer?

• Reconstruction of environment from sensor data
  Spatial reasoning
• Being able to select the right motor skill (and
  parameterize it) in order kick the ball in right
  direction
• Strategic thinking and acting
• Proactive in order to create opportunities
• Reactive in order to exploit opportunities

Referred http//www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/
robocup/ presentation slides
3
Can a robot do these?

• Understand
• Simulate its environment
• Collaborate and compete
• Display emotions

Referred http//web.cecs.pdx.edu/mperkows/CLASS
_ROBOTICS/ presentation slides
4
Power of AI

• Design of intelligent machines
• formalization of the notions of intelligence and
  rational behaviour
• understanding mechanisms of intelligence
• interaction of humans and intelligent machines
• In 1997 a computer, Deep Blue, won a chess
  match against world champion Kasparov

5
Chess versus soccer robot
Referred http//web.cecs.pdx.edu/mperkows/CLASS
_ROBOTICS/ presentation slides
6
RoboCup

• Is an international robotics competition founded
  in 1993
• Is an international joint project to promote AI
  and robotics
• Is a task for a team of multiple fast-moving
  robots under a dynamic environment
• Has goal By 2050, develop a team of fully
  autonomous humanoid robots that can win against
  the human world champion team in soccer

7
Cont'd......

• RoboCup focuses in four areas-
• RoboCup Rescue
• RoboCup _at_ home
• RoboCupJunior
• RoboCup Soccer

8
RoboCup Rescue

• Disaster rescue is
• one of the most serious issues
• involving a large numbers of heterogeneous agents
  
• in a hostile environment.
• Is divided into two leagues
• RoboCup Rescue Robot league
• Robocup Rescue Simulation league

9
RoboCup _at_ Home

• Aim is to promote the development of robots that
  will aid humans in everyday life.
• Participants are given an environment that
  involves a kitchen, a living room, and possibly
  more.

10
RoboCup Junior

• Is a project-oriented educational initiative
• sponsors local and international robotic events
• For young students.
• provides a unique opportunity for
• participants with a variety of interests and
  strengths
• work together as a team to achieve a common goal
  like-
• Soccer challenge
• Dance challenge
• Rescue challenge

11
RoboCup Soccer

• Main focus of the RoboCup activities is
  competitive football.
• Is divided into the following leagues
• Simulation league
• Small size robot league
• Middle size robot league
• Four-legged robot league
• Humanoid league

12
Case Study Small size Robot league

• focuses on the problem
• intelligent multi-agent cooperation
• control in a highly dynamic environment
• with a hybrid centralized/distributed system.
• Two teams of five robots each

13
Small size robot soccer rules

• Robot must fit
• within an 180mm diameter circle
• must be no higher than 15cm
• Green carpeted field
• 4.9m long by 3.4m wide
• an orange golf ball
• Robots come in two flavours
• local on-board vision sensors
• global vision.

14
Robot Vision

• Global
• Use an overhead camera located 4m above the
  playing surface
• Off-field PC to identify and track the robots as
  they move around the field
• Local
• have their sensing on robot itself

15
How soccer playing robots work

• Two complex processes are involved
• Image processing
• Strategy and Control
• Image processing
• 640x480 images are available
• Only 5 colors are there
• Green field, white lines, orange golf ball, blue
  / yellow ping-pong balls to identify teams.
• Additional markers can be used by teams to
  identify their orientation in images

16
Image Processing

• Each image frame is scanned for each color
  separately
• Blob Analysis is performed for each color
• Identifies regions of connected pixels
• Additional processing on frame sequence
• determines speed and direction of each blob
• Information is passed on to strategy program

17
Strategy and Control

• Decides whether to play offence or defense
• Where each robot should move
• Whether to pass or hit directly
• Decisions based on Expert Systems
• A long complex list of True-False questions used
  to decide actions
• Based on experiences / perceptions of programmers
• Decisions passed on to Control System
• Involves largely mathematical formulations to
  calculate trajectories of motion
• Decide correct torques in motors/ currents in
  actuators

18
RoboCup 2007 - results
19
References

• http//www.robocup.org/
• http//www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Aug00/howitwo
  rks.html
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v1JJsBFiXGl0

Demo