Robot basketball: Ball dribbling-a modified juggling task

Abstract

Ball dribbling is a central element of basketball. One main challenge for realizing basketball robots is to achieve the stability of the periodic dribbling task. We show that the dribbling problem is closely related to robot juggling problems that are well-studied. To this end, the paper introduces a hybrid (discretecontinuous) dynamical model for ball dribbling that provides the basis for the design of reference trajectories and controllers. Furthermore the paper discusses local stability and parameter sensitivity in particular in comparison to juggling. Theoretical results are experimentally validated for ball dribbling using an industrial robot. Force/torque-based tracking and vision-based tracking are compared. For both tracking approaches, dribbling for multiple cycles is achieved. The visionbased approach performs better as compared to the force/torque-based approach, in particular for imprecise estimates of the coefficient of restitution. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.