A dynamic and efficient active vision system for humanoid soccer robots

Abstract

This paper presents an efficient active vision system which controls the head of a humanoid soccer robot. The system explicitly separates static information obtained offline from the map, and dynamic information from mobile objects, such as the ball and other players. Both types of information are mapped and handled in a simplified structure called action space, which assigns scores to each possible action of the robot’s head. Scores also consider the movement constraints of the robot’s head. Due to its simplicity and efficient information handling, the proposed active vision system is able to run in real-time in less than 1ms. The performance of the system in a robot soccer environment is tested via simulation and real experiments.