A robot soccer team called Tech United is created by the Eindhoven University of Technology, UK. These robots have the privilege to win the world robocup title for 5 times.
This blog presents to you the magnificence of football by Tech United. Whether it’s kickoff, pass, shot at goal, or dribble, these robots can do it with perfection.
Tiny tires are used to hold the ball and roll on the ground.
A magnetic lever is placed alongside the tires, that help them kickoff or pass the ball to their team mate. The ball is kicked with the speed of a human shot, which is about 10m per second.
Each robot communicates with its teammate at a rate of 60 messages per second. These messages include communicating relative distance for a pass and its current position on the pitch.
A camera helps them see and recognize objects and colors. Using color, they can recognize their teammates, opponent robots, and the football.
The white color of the pitch lines, for example, help the robot locate their position on the pitch.
While the camera is fixed below the head, an inverted circular mirror is placed atop the head that helps them see the pitch at a 360 degree view. Thus it acts as an effective tool to see the white pitch lines, and the yellow ball throughout the pitch.
The robot’s don’t see the goal. Instead they use the visual information of the pitch lines and calculate exactly where they should aim for a score.
Combined, the visual information from the camera and mirror, the robot draws a 3m radius across it. If it sees the opponent’s color in one or more directions, it moves in the opposite direction. Similarly, if it sees a teammate color in the pass line, it decides to pass the ball.
Football tactics need to be decided in seconds, which humans do effectively. An efficient algorithm is fed to the robots that help them learn football tactics and make decisions in seconds. The information is also used to figure out a move on the pitch.
But why soccer robots?
What’s the advantage of soccer robots? The question shouldn’t be this. Instead, the right question would be ‘what advantage does it offer to scientists?’
Building soccer robots is a great challenge for mechatronics and the software industry. A within-second teamwork and decision making is required alongside performing swift actions with the ball.
Each year, in the robocup, teams from 20 countries bring improved robots and try to claim the title. This takes forward the robotics technology that can play a key role in other industries.
As of now, the Tech United and other RoboCup teams aim to advance soccer robots so as to compete with humans, by 2050.
The vision is not to beat humans but to build technology that can effectively assist them.
