RoboSoccer: autonomous robots in a complex environment

Abstract

We are participating in the international competition to develop robots that can play football (or soccer as it is known in the US and Canada). The competition consists of several leagues each of which examines a different technology but shares the common goal of advancing the skills of autonomous robots, robots that function without a central hierarchical command structure. The Dutch team, Clockwork Orange, involves several universities and the contribution of our group at the TU Deift is in the domain of robot vision and motion. In this paper we will describe the background to the project, the characteristics of the robots in our league, our approach to various vision tasks, their implementation in computer architectures, and the results of our efforts.