FutBot: A vision system for robotic soccer

Abstract

In recent years there has been a great effort concentrated in the research on multi-agent systems. RoboCup is an international initiative advocated to the stimulation of this research, using the soccer game as a standard platform for benchmarking techniques, prove architectures and devise models of interaction among agents in an opposition environment. One of the problems to consider in RoboCup is the implementation of a vision system, which is the main source of information for agents during games. The present work focuses on the implementation of a robust and fault tolerant global vision system for RoboCup Small League soccer teams. It is based on a vision control approach, in which vision processes are guided by necessity of information and knowledge about the environment. The object detection is based on a chromatic approach where chromatic patterns were modeled using a mixture of gaussian functions, trained with a stochastic gradient descent method. The implemented system meets, and in certain cases exceeds, the functionality required to participate in RoboCup and reported in related works. © Springer-Verlag 2000.