Kinematics of Two-Roller-Driven Ball for RoboCup Soccer Robot

Abstract

RoboCup is a competition designed to promote the research related to Artificial Intelligence (AI). We have also organized a RoboCup soccer team "Hibikino-Musashi" and work on one of AI research topics, co-operated behavior control system using multiple autonomous mobile robots. In order to realize co-operated behavior in the soccer game, the research of ball handling system is one of the important issues capable of dribbling with a ball and passing the ball to teammate robots. In this paper, the kinematics of a two-roller-drive ball controller, which are attached in front of the soccer robot and designed to have friction on the upper side of the ball, is proposed. The forward and inverse kinematics between the ball-motion and two active rollers are derived, and the ball control mechanism has been developed and evaluated based on the results of simulations and experiments.