Football playing robot

Black Market Winner -- 3/21/11 - 3/25/11

 * Description:
 * The project is to build an autonomous robot, which plays football with golf balls on 2m x 3m arena by rules of Robotex. Robotex is an annual open Estonian competition of robotics mainly between three largest informatics related universities: University of Tartu, Tallinn University of Technology and Estonian IT College. The goal of the competition is to raise popularity of exact sciences and computer science. Our team is one of participating teams from University of Tartu.
 * This year we are trying to build a smaller and faster robot than any of robots seen on this competition this far. Features of our new robot include:
 * omnidirectional movement using brushless motors and self-designed omniwheels
 * positioning using magnetic hall sensors on wheels and data from image processing
 * localisation and mapping of target balls, goals and the opponent using self designed hyperbolic mirror based omnidirectional camera system


 * Goal of our team is to design a robot which fits to cylinder of 18cm diameter with height of 15 cm, so it would also comply to size limits of Robocup SSL. That way the design and solutions could be used if our university should wish to compete there in the future. Due to the size constriction and our need to process video on-board Pandaboard with it's OMAP4 processor is just right. Also we will try to make a great use of some other Pandaboard features including
 * Wi-Fi for wireless debugging,
 * chance to offload some video processing to DSP,
 * direct communication with lower level electronics through extension port
 * and possibly camera port if we should succeed in finding appropriate camera,
 * passive cooling for simplicity

Progress
Time frame: Fully working robot must be ready for the competition in beginning of December 2011.
 * In spring we are developing our mechanical design, testing and constructing electronics, writing and testing new software on our previous robot and simultaneously on the new platform - hopefully Pandaboard.
 * In the beginning of summer we are building the parts by SolidWorks design and continuing software development.
 * In autumn we test the whole design.

Updates
Here will be monthly updates on our progress.

About us

 * Our team has participated in the same event several times. Last year we designed our mirror system and reused our omnidirectional drive first used for Robotex 2008. So every year we use our old know-how and develop some new. Last time we used a laptop motherboard, but we can't use one this year as they are to large. All information of our last year robot is available in our Team Description Paper (so far only in Estonian, but don't hesitate to ask if you would like same additional info).
 * We are all students of physics or computer architecture in University of Tartu. We are supervised and helped by mentors in club of robotics of our university. There are several other projects in the club for example designing 3*3*3cm robot swarm.

Contacts

 * johu ut.ee
 * mihkel.heidelberg gmail.com