University team reaches quarter-finals of the 2002 Robot Soccer World Cup

17 July 2002 News

A team from the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering at the University of Pretoria (UP) recently participated in the FIRA (Federation of International Robot-soccer Associations) World Cup, held in Korea in May.

The team, representing UP and South Africa, consisted of Warren du Plessis, Paul Rathaba and Rademeyer Vermaak, who competed in the MiroSot League together with contestants from 22 other countries. The TUKS Cheetas won their first games, but lost the quarter-finals to China.

The MiroSot League has five robots per side. These robots move on wheels and are limited to 7,5 x 7,5 x 7,5 cm in size. A digital camera is mounted above the playing field and an orange golf ball is used. Each robot has a distinguishing colour displayed on its upper surface. A framegrabber card captures the camera images and analysis software determines the position and orientation of the ball and all the robots on the field. This information is fed into strategy software, which determines the course of action to be taken by the robots in the team.

Specific commands are sent to the individual robots using a radio frequency transmitter. Each robot receives the signal, from where a microprocessor interprets it and sends corresponding commands to drive its wheels. In this way, the strategy software controls the movement of the robots on the field continuously, making the system fully autonomous.

A South African Robot Soccer Competition, under the auspices of the South African Council for Automation and Computation (SACAC), will take place on 28 November 2002 at the University of Pretoria. Teams from the Universities of Cape Town, Natal and Pretoria are scheduled to participate.

For more information: Sunel de Coning, University of Pretoria, 012 420 2482.

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