BabyTigers-98: Osaka legged robot team

Abstract

The Osaka Legged Robot Team, BabyTigers-98, attended the First Sony Legged Robot Competition and Demonstration which was held at La Cite La Villeta, a science and technology museum in Paris in conjunction with the second Robot Soccer World Cup, RoboCup-98, July, 1998. This article describes our approach to the competition. The main feature of our system is to apply a direct teaching method to behavior acquisition for four-legged robots as one of the robot learning issues. Since the robots recognize objects in the field by color information, the color calibration is another issue. To cope with color changes due to lighting conditions, we developed an interactive color calibration tool with graphic user interface. Based on the color calibration and the learning by teaching methods, the robot successfully exhibits basic skills such as ball approaching and kicking.