Robaldo - My First Soccer Bot

[JavaRN]

I've been working on this project the whole summer. This is my first attempt for building a soccer bot. You can view a video of my small project on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG9m8hqvTmk

Robot soccer is a very interesting area of robotics and I always wanted to go into it. There are many variables in it (lighting, blob recognition, movement, balancing), but my major concern was robot weight. To make my soccerbot viable I had to find a balance between what makes a good soccer bot in terms of resources and its weight. My robot is equipped with CM-5 for moves and balancing, Jon's I/O board, and roboard for logic and blob interpretation. My first attempt in building this bot ended up in a massive 2.5Kg and I had some troubles with leg servos to hold the weight. After may attemplts in redesigning the bot I came across a document by the university of Plymouth about a project called BunnyBot http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/soc/staff/GuidBugm/pub/Fira09.pdf and I found the robot design (the torso a little bigger and the shoulder servos tilted 90 degrees) very interesting and useful for what I had in mind. So I decided to follow that design.

Following some wise advices from Billyzelsnack about cutting and shaping aluminum I decided to have a try and construct my first torso, after putting all together the robot now weighed 2.12Kg a little lighter than the previous version but enough to walk faster and fall less!

I'm not finished with this project, there is still a lot to be done. I'm in the process of building another similar bot so that they can play against each other, this will probably take me a month or so.

Thanks for reading the post and I will be happy to hear your comments.


Charles

[billyzelsnack]

Fantastic job. I think your video already qualifies you and it's only November!

[limor]

Amazing! please share all your code

[JavaRN]

Thanks Bill for your comments. As we had time to discuss a couple of months ago, I have no intention of participating in Robocup, it's too expensive and it's not meant for hobbyists like me - even though I take my hobby very seriously and I use it to do more research on areas that when I was a student at the university in the 90s had no time and no resources to see them work in reality. Things like image/blob recognition, localisation and so on.

Thanks to Limor as well. One comment regarding the code to share, well, it's to early to do it, as I am still in the initial stage of this project. I expect people participating in robocup to share their code first, I read some of their papers but they were quite superficial, no details about the actual coding was discussed, however the paper by team b-human about their nao robots is quite interesting and it contains reference to their code (they were also very helpful to others by releasing their code), might be a good start for people like me who have to do all the coding on their own and also have to buy all the material from their pockets!!!!

[limor]

I know that the German robocup Aibo and Humanoid leagues had in the past shared all their code and data after every robocup competition so that they learn from each other and improve their abilities the following year. There is no formal repository and rigid format for exposing the technical details and this is very unfortunate.
There are some individual members of robocup who do share their code and experience (if you search robocup on robosavvy forum you will find such people).

The important thing is that your code can be half cooked and messy. it doesnt matter because whoever will be inspired by the video will make an effort to understand what you did and copy-paste the relevant bits.

[RoboFlop]

Cool stuff JavaRN - Since getting hold of my Bioloid I have been seriously impressed by some of the things I have seen through this site that people are doing with them The Plymouth university article is interesting too btw.

Have you used a Havimo for your vision on that Bioloid or some other solution?

Need to get me a Roboard I reckon

Oh well, back to work...

[JavaRN]

Have you used a Havimo for your vision on that Bioloid or some other solution?

I've used a webcam (microsoft lifecam vx500) quite an old model now but it works well with roboard.

Need to get me a Roboard I reckon

Roboard is a great product, and if you're thinking of doing something serious with your bot I think it's worthwhile having one (actually I hav two, one for every bioloid!!)

[RoboFlop]

Thanks for the reply to my questions JavaRN.

I have an interest in the Robocup myself, perhaps we should make a team - - though probably your Robaldo and my Bioloid ("George Worst" might be a good name for him) would not forge a winning combination methinks ...

I was thinking about getting a Roboard but, indecisive as I am, I am intruiged and inspired by the approach taken by Plymouth university in the pdf you posted. I'd maybe like to take a similar path but dont know enough yet to even start on that road. Im still fiddling with Arduinos on the microcontroller side and using the Robotis software and the CM510 to get my Bioloid to do something (like walk)...

Currently I am spending most of my Bioloid time making custom parts though...

Unclebobs Knight Templar with its RX24s is something else that I am planning on learning from/emulating, - another inspirational Bioloid owner. I was going to upgrade my AX12's to 18's but I thought what the hell, I'll go for the RX's instead. Obviously that will make my CM510 somewhat redundant but with Limor posting firmware alternatives from his involvement with the Actuated Character project I can see that controlling Robotis servos from other controllers is viable.

Keep up the interesting posts, I am always pleased to read of other owners doing interesting stuff and I am grateful you take the time to post the products of your labour.