Design and Development of an Omni Wheel Soccer Robot

Abstract

This paper presents the design of soccer playing robots developed for the RoboSprint 2015 national competition by the team from University of Central Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. This competition was envisioned to be a stepping stone to encourage locally developed robots to take part in the international RoboCup matches. Some of the biggest challenges for competing in the international RoboCup was the necessary leap in design capability that was missing in most national competitions. Our main design criteria was to develop robots with good performance without the usual high costs associated with such designs. In this regard, we were able to design and build two robots that had about half the speed and acceleration for less than a quarter of the total cost of the typical designs employed by the leading teams in the RoboCup SSL (Small Size League). Another design choice normally not found in such robots is the implementation of an internal closed loop feedback control in addition to the external closed loop control incorporating the shared vision server and the team server. This internal feedback loop architecture was developed to reduce the responsibility on the team server, leaving it free to form strategy without having to be concerned with the micro-management of the two robots. Test measurements show that these performance goals are achieved with a low-costrobot.