Real-time control of soccer-playing robots using off-board vision: the dynamite testbed

Abstract

The dynamite testbed has been constructed for experiments with autonomous mobile robots. It consists of a fleet of radio-controlled vehicles that receive commands from a remote computer. All the robots share an off-board vision system that tracks the position and orientation of each robot at 60 Hz. A novel aspect of this system is that computer vision is used not only for sensing the environment, but also for sensing the state of the robot itself. The former information is used for planning and the latter for control. The testbed has been used successfully for experiments with robot soccer games to compare the effectiveness of alternate control architectures. Testbed use is facilitated through a graphical simulator that allows control programs to be tested off-line at a workstation. The testbed has been developed to the point where we now have a portable version that has been demonstrated at a number of conferences.