2011 International Conference on Pattern Analysis and Intelligent Robotics 28-29 June 2011, Putrajaya, Malaysia

The Mechanical an nd Circuit Design of Robot R Soccer: A Study

Shaizan Bin Jusoh1, Khairuddin Omar2
2

Electrical Engineering D Department, Politeknik Sultan Haji Ahmad Shah, Paha ang, Malaysia Faculty of Information Science and Technology, National University of Malay,sia, Malaysia
1

shaizeen@polisas.edu.my 2 ko@ftsm.ukm.my

Abstract - The paper study robot developm ments of the last 10 years in the area of mechanical and circuit or robot soccer in order to present the best per rformance robot design. This paper reviews about develo opment of robots soccer based on sub categories of robot. The T survey gives priority attention to the selection of a rob bust design: The constrain of robot size, weight and well b balance design in order to get high performance system in a very small package. dware; circuit Keywords - component; robot soccer; hard I. INTRODUCTION Autonomous robot soccer games is one of the interesting and importance applications in research area in the last decade [16].Robot soccer game also give researcher to test the efficiency and compatibility of theories an nd technique into application area. The basic technique implemented in robot g, motion control, soccer games consist of the image processing robot design, AI, communication, behavio our, strategy and collaboration.
Vision system

al communication. The robots system through a wireless seria produce mechanical actions as execute these commands and p ordered by the Al system. opments the body of robot, a This paper surveys the develo low-level controller (integrated circuitry). We will study several paper which describe mechanical n and circuit construction robot soccer and th hen propose the best design to get well-balance system. II. GENERAL MODEL FOR SMALL SIZE ROBOT HARDW WARE.

A. Body of robot:
Body bracket Two DC Motors Tw wo front panel(Dribbler) Two o wheels with rubber tire Special Mounting M for electronic

AI system

B. Electronic circuitry: :
Transmitte

Communication Module Power supply(battery) Microcontroller(CPU)

Robot

Motor driver.

er Robot. Figre 1: Subsystem in a team Socce The most importance system is visi ion system which robot action based on it information [4][8][16][22]. Vision round dimension, systems identify the ball, robots and playgr and all the information is transferred to th he host computer. The host computer decides each robots a action likes plans robot paths ball coordinate and generates con ntrol words for all the robots[17]. These commands are trans sfer to the robot

Additional sensor

robot vehicle hardware Figure 2: Overview of r tion, ability robot to working In real mini robot competit of the whole robust system. In perfect is a fundamental part o t to get task as accurate as such a dynamic environment ernal processing and a suitable possible, a robot needs fast inte

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structure [5]. The size of each robot is limited to 7.5cm 7.5cm7.5cm. Figure 2 show an overview of robot vehicle hardware which includes body of robots and electronic circuitry(control module). A. Body of Robot.

scene recognition. Motion control unit applied to control the velocity, angular velocity and basic command (Go, Stop and Reset)[10]. This module then decodes given velocity values from the received packet, recalculates the values to the desired number of encoder counts and writes these values to the DC motor controllers [14]. Feedback from motor is needed to measure robot movement and control itself. Figure 3, show basic architecture of robot circuit.
Receiver wireless

Power supply module

Microcontroller

Figure 3: [23] Sample Body or robot. There were several factors to influence the designed robot such as: weight of robot, material is used, size and type and motion [12]. Body of robot design related to mechanical actions that can do by robots as directed by algorithms [15]. Movement relates to geometry of the motors, design of the wheels and gear ratio between motor and wheel, have broad wheels and tires with high friction. Control of the ball (chess shot and pass) relates to dribbler design, kicker design and DC motors. Protection relates to body bracket and material. The mechanical design also needs the following requirement [5]: B. Perform task as accurate as possible Stay on its given path Fit into a cube with an edge length of 7.5cm The low point of gravity to reduce slipping Have no front or back side (symmetric robot) Have roller bearings for mounting the wheels Have a possibility for driving the ball Have a single stage gear Motor with high resolution encoders Small tolerance of motion Electronic circuitry.

Motion control

m1

Motor driver

m2

Figure 3: Basic Architecture of Robot Circuit. III. CURRENT MICRO ROBOT SOCCER DEVELOPMENT

The electronic design consists of three major module: the system control module, communication module and power module (power supply to each module)[3]. The complicated electronic board in several design need several voltage level to supply power to its module. Control module consists of has a controller component that receives information from an AI(server) to be processed and transferred to the robot motion. information sent to the controller via a wireless receiver must be continued without loss of information [8].Communication speed between the host PC and robots should correspond to the frame rate of the camera used for

CENDORI Micro Robot Mechanical has two traction drives utilizes toothed flexible timing belt and pulley mechanism in side by side. traction drive train consists of a motor, a gear head and belt type selected according to the load condition, and the effective wheel diameter is 20.1mm. to the opponent robots is illegal. Frame design to support all component to prevent damage but not to heavy by using light material. Component robots are located in such away to reduce height and balance the mass distribution. DC brushed motor manufactured by Swiss Minimotor SA, with nominal voltage of 6 volts and come assembled together with the motor. CENDORI robot controller use CPU by 8-bit data bus. CPU generates PWM output for motor control through its PWM port, and this signal is amplified by dual high-speed MOSFET driver, 74LS83 is used in changing the direction of the motor rotation. Two counters, LS7166, were used as the encoder counters of two motors. Designer also use IR sensor to obstacle avoidance [1]. Huiliang Wang; Jianhai Han introduce electronic part of soccer-robot is designed with one single chip

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microcontroller AT89C51 and a pair of motion control chip LM629. The LM629 is one of dedicated intelligent motion control processors which is used to control servomotors. LM629 features has 32-bit position, velocity and acceleration registers, programmable digital PID filter with 16-bit coefficients, programmable derivative sampling interval, 8- or 12-bit DAC output data and sign magnitude. Build in LM629 a digital Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) filter to compensate the control loop performed by the LM629 expressed as in [2] (1).

In this application the controller works in velocity mode. Microcontroller then decodes desired velocity values and writes these values to the DC motor controllers. Communication module gets desired velocities for all team robots from the strategy module, creates packet from these data and sends it via standard serial RS232C port to the transmitter[7]. Han K. H. et. al present the developed mechanical robot uses solid frame from aluminium with two DC-motors which has 21.2 stall torque, 8,200 no load speed and Maximum speed is 1.5m/s. Robot dimension is 7.5 7.5 6cm3 in cubic size, and the weight is about 0.45Kg. Robot controller is ATMEL ATmega128 is used for CPU that has 16MHz clock and can generate PWM signals. L298N is the motor driving chip. In particular EPLD type ALTERA EPM6064Schip use as encoder counter. [9] Novak G. et. al. presented structure their robot consist: Two geared wheels with special tire are moved by two DC motors with two channel magnetically encoders with a resolution of 512 impulses per rotation, voltage rating between 3 and 12V and the rotation speed should be between 6000 and 10000 rot/min. Body casing using solid aluminium with special mounting for the electronic. The first controller board is in circuit programmable and can be used for a several number of other applications. It contains a micro controller C167 of Infineon, a flash EPROM, a serial connection interface for programming. Furthermore it contains in silicon a CAN bus interface, an asynchronous and a synchronous serial interface. The second controller board contains the implementation of motion, controlled by PWM signals[10]. Ruiz M. S. et. al present some result of experiments performed on the dribbler to test its effectiveness. They define the best dribbler design are ability catch the ball, hold it in canter of robot and release ball when needed. Their paper is based on the latest dribbler design. The dribblers were set to include the following considerations[11]: A more extensive angle of reception for the ball. A new dribbler bar material for better ball control. A decrease in bar diameter to reduce weight and volume. A smaller dribbler motor size to reduce weight and facilitate incorporation inside the robot. Additional ideas such as inclusion of a shock absorber were left out. statistical design was made to distinguish the effects Weitzenfeld A. et. al. use motor control release by a Texas Instruments TMS32OLF2407A fixed-point single chip DSP (Digital Signal Processor)optimized for digital. The main controller receives remote communication from the Al System via a Radiometric RPC- 914/869-64 local transceiver with radio frequency at either 914MHz or 869MHz with 64kbit/sec. [18] the paper describes the design of electrical system allows the software to control the robots actuators. Two PCBs make up the electrical design: Main Central CPU Board uses Motorolas MC68332 32 bit microcontroller. This

To get light the weight of the total robot, Ce Li et. al. use aluminium plates and redesign the mechanism of the robot using 3D model software. The bottom plate is used to carry the motors, kicking system and batteries. The robots come with kicking system. Designer use Faulhaber 2224S006CR DC-Motors to make a robot moving smoothly and reflective quad encoder for accurate wheel travel and speed estimation. It consist four omnidirectional wheels so that the robot move more rapidly and flexibly in almost any directions. Their new control system is based on a dualprocessors architecture in single chip ALTERA FPGA. One processor is used for the PD control of the motors, So that, motors have the real-time control that makes it respond quickly. The other one implements other functions of the control system such as wireless communication, states displaying, kicker controlling and accelerate sampling. In the control part, secondary processor controls the four motors with the PD method. Each motor has a decoder, which can provide rotor position or speed information. Main processor communicates with PC by wireless module, the robot also use acceleration chip ADXL202, and controls the kicker and LED. It gathers the information from PC and writes the data into the internal RAM which both processor share use together. That means both processors do not communicate with each other. The H-Bridge (LM298) are use to control motor[3]. Shen W. M. et. al build mobile robot for middle league Robocop. The hardware configuration of robot is as follows The basis of each robot is a 3Ox50cm, 4-wheel, 2x4 drive, DC model car. The wheels on each side can be controlled independently to make the car spin fast and manoeuvre easily. The two motors are controlled by the onboard computer through two serial ports. Older control version they use open loop concept to control motion of robot but the accuracy of this open-loop control is bad when the power decreases or as the environment changes. They solve this problem, by made all motor controls closed-loop in the entire system. With these closed-loop concept, the credibility of motor movement has increased considerably and become more robust in any environment[5]. Author proposes that mechanical construction must be very robust. Robot Control electronics consists of the microcontroller Motorola MC68HCl1, RF (433MHz), two motor controllers and encoder. Motor controller has trajectory profile generator, programmable PID filter and PWM output.

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microcontroller have major benefit is its built-in Time Processor Unit (TPU). The TPU has 16 channels (I/O pins) that can be configured independently for a variety of tasks, including quadrature decoding (QDEC), input capture (IC) and simple Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) generation. Except for the kicker mechanism, the motors have encoders for fast and immediate local feedback. A separate semidiscrete H-bridge controls the motion to each motor. This Hbridge consists of a MOSFET driver, two n-channel and two p-channel MOSFETS. The electrical hardware controls these mechanical systems and interfaces to a high speed and low error rate[13 ]. Ching-Chang Wong et. al. show architecture of the implemented soccer robot has two main parts: control circuit board and mechanism design of robot. The control circuit board of the soccer robot use FPGA with single processor. The mechanical design, they use aluminium as material to fabricate the robot[16] . T. Wattanavekin et. al present embedded system in designed robot soccer. This article describes the overview of the robot system design for RoboCup soccer robot implementation on FPGA. The PCB (Printed Circuit Board) size is designed to utilize all available space by implementing all logic parts into an FPGA. So, they can minimize number of component and the circuits become less complicated. The change to FPGA brings about many advantages. circuit uses less electronic components which also reduces the cost. Flexible to change logical function circuit. Using FPGA by only read and writes on board without modifying any hardware. Less component means consumes less power than series of microcontroller. FPGA is faster than microcontroller because each module does its processes in parallel in single chip. Due to the reduction of PCB size, it is easier to design mechanical part in a larger space available[19]. IV. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK

Figure 4: Sketches of Movement Part. Above system must be use 3D design to ensure body of robot solid but light. Some mechanical characteristics, like the wheel size, body momentum and weight distribution must be considered during designed. Some calculation need to do as propose [10]. Starting torque, The minimum number of impulse per rotation and The number encoder per rotation are use to design PID in circuit. Another problem must consider is battery voltage drop and discharge during continues dynamic adaptation. B. Controller sub-system A new high performance soccer robot control system has been developed by multiprocessor system based on a FPGA. The advantages are [3]: Low power consumption and small battery may be use. Low communication mistake between part. Easy modify the function without modifying hardware part. DSP process becomes faster in single chip. There were found that many parts of the robot that requires the simultaneous control to establish an efficient system.The are motor control, communication control,and data control[3]. The propose to use FPGA that provides Multi Processor design . Sample controller architecture propose by Ce Li et al. [3] in figure 5.

A. mechanical sub-system The mechanical sub-system includes all mechanical characteristics related to shape and movement part: body material should be light material but avoid damage during impact (Aluminium or acrylic material), cube shape and wheel dimensions comply by the MiroSot-FIRA rules. A differential drive system was adopted, using [1]Motor with high resolution encoders, reach a speed up to 2.5m/s Have an acceleration of more than 5m/s2 and tolerance of motion less than O.5cm/m. The best is motor Faulhaber 2224S006CR DC-Motors to make a robot moving smoothly and reflective quadrature encoder for accurate motion and speed estimation. The mobility robot system should design to make the simple movement, like straight line and circular trajectories. The robot should have broad wheels and tires with high friction with singe stage gear attach to motor. The low gravity centre of mass reduces weight transfer between wheels during the robot accelerates and give stable motion[18]. Figure 4 show sketches for movement part.

Firgure 5: Dual Processors Control System Main processor module act to control input in robot while second processor act to control output from robot. These two processors do not communicate with each other, but they are connected trough bus system .Information from main processor will save into internal RAM then the data execute by second processor. Motor control module one of the most important part of the system since it is used for controlling the movement .the module consist PID and DSP to calculate feedback from motor encoder so that it can

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perform all tasks in parallel. RF Module receive command data from AI system which consists of velocity in two directions and one angular velocity for each robot. External RF module it must be able to receive latest game data rapidly and consistent and sent to internal RF module in. Figure 5 show additional module for dribbling.

Electronic Part
Dual Processor Special Motion control chip

Advantages
process to receive data and calculate the motion control can be implemented efficiently ability to vary the velocity and acceleration accuracy of determining the position ,able to accurately calculate the trajectory and make special motion mode. Whole process can be done at single time trough parallel processing data. Very fast control period. Low current demand and small PCB sizes.[3] local handle of the ball

Figure 5: Dribble Module It functions as the ball detector. The FPGA generates rectangular wave that has frequency to detect ball in dribble area .[20]The use of the dual h-Bright L293 IC reduced the PCB space and the implementation of the IC to control motor hardware was simplified which requires only the addition of some free-wheeling diodes to protect the motors. [22]A maximum transfer rate is fast enough of RF communication speed should be selected in the system. [21] the best performance communication module use PTR4000.It consist transceiver chip nRF2401 for wide band 2.4 - 2.5 GHz. The module is easy to programmable with tree wire serial bus and use less power but stable and fast Friction coefficient and the robot weight give problem to desired trajectory because wheel slipping. Sophisticated approaches are utilizing acceleration sensors. Thus, the information about the difference between the wheel acceleration and the real robot acceleration can be used for correcting action. Performance depended on combination between mechanical part and controller in a well-balanced. The proposed latest design is needed to create physical shape of robot soccer(Mirosot) :

multi processor in single chip control module(FPGA) Dribbler module sensor

Acknowledgement: This work was support by the intellectual cluster project of FTSM,UKM.

References
[1] Kyung-Hoon Kim; Kuk-Won Ko; Joo-Gon Kim; Su-Ho Lee; Hyung-Suck Cho; , "The development of a micro robot system for robot soccer game," Robotics and Automation, 1997. Proceedings., 1997 IEEE International Conference on , vol.1, no., pp.644-649 vol.1, 20-25 Apr 1997 [2] Huiliang Wang; Jianhai Han; , "The Design and Implementation of Soccer Robot Control System," Electrical and Control Engineering (ICECE), 2010 International Conference on , vol., no., pp.2307-2310, 25-27 June 2010 [3] Ce Li; Yang Jiang; Zhenyu Wu; Watanabe, T.; , "A Multiprocessor System for a Small Size Soccer Robot Control System," Electronic Design, Test and Applications, 2008. DELTA 2008. 4th IEEE International Symposium on , vol., no., pp.115-118, 23-25 Jan. 2008 [4] Palacin, J.; Sanuy, A.; Clua, X.; Chapinal, G.; Bota, S.; Moreno, M.; Herms, A.; , "Autonomous mobile mini-robot with embedded CMOS vision system," IECON 02 [Industrial Electronics Society, IEEE 2002 28th Annual Conference of the] , vol.3, no., pp. 2439- 2444 vol.3, 5-8 Nov. 2002 [5] Wei-Min Shen; Adibi, J.; Adobbati, R.; Bonghan Cho; Erdem, A.; Moradi, H.; Salemi, B.; Tejada, S.; , "Building integrated mobile robots for soccer competition," Robotics and Automation, 1998. Proceedings. 1998 IEEE International Conference on , vol.3, no., pp.2613-2618 vol.3, 16-20 May 1998 [6] Albahal, H.; Algabri, A.; Alarifi, S.; Alsayari, N.; Fardoun, A.; Harib, K.; , "Design of a wheeled soccer robot," Mechatronics and its Applications (ISMA), 2010 7th International Symposium on , vol., no., pp.1-6, 20-22 April 2010 [7] Hrabec, J.; Honzik, B.; , "Mobile robots playing soccer," Advanced Motion Control, 2002. 7th International Workshop on , vol., no., pp. 510- 513, 2002 [8] Xuemei Huang; Leian Zhang; Xiuting Wei; , "Research and Design of Soccer-Robot Wireless Communication System," Embedded Software and Systems Symposia, 2008. ICESS Symposia '08. International Conference on , vol., no., pp.328332, 29-31 July 2008 [9] Han K. H. et. al., Robot Soccer System of SOTY 5 For Middle League mirosot. 2002 FIRA Robot Congress. [10] G. Novak; , "Roby-go, a prototype for several MiroSOT soccer playing robots," Computational Cybernetics, 2004. ICCC 2004. Second IEEE International Conference on , vol., no., pp.207-212, 2004

Design Part
Light weight

Advantages
to reduce the momentum of movement and easier exchange of movement control enable the robot to move in different directions quickly can vary with the precise movements can vary with the precise movements without slippery thought process to determine the direction of motion more easily control the movement of the ball near the robot while the robot move forward and turning.

Dual Direction Low canter of gravity tire design with a strong grip two-wheel design

Dribbler mechanism

The proposed latest technology for the robot-soccer control module:

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[11] Xuemei Huang; Leian Zhang; Xiuting Wei; , "Research and Design of Soccer-Robot Wireless Communication System," Embedded Software and Systems Symposia, 2008. ICESS Symposia '08. International Conference on , vol., no., pp.328332, 29-31 July 2008. [12] Yaser Maddahi and Mehdi Maleki. "Simulation Study and Laboratory Results of Two-wheeled Mobile Robot" International Conference on Automation and Information (ICAI 2004). Italy, Venice. Nov. 2004. [13] Weitzenfeld A. et. al., Multi-Robot System: Extending RoboCup Small-Size Architecture with Local Vision and AddHoc Networking, IEEE 2006. [14] Solc, F.; Honzik, B.; , "Modelling and control of a soccer robot," Advanced Motion Control, 2002. 7th International Workshop on , vol., no., pp. 506- 509, 2002 [15] Hyun-Sik Shim; Yoon-Gyeoung Sung; Seung-Ho Kim; JongHwan Kim; , "Design of action level in a hybrid control structure for vision based soccer robot system," Intelligent Robots and Systems, 1999. IROS '99. Proceedings. 1999 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on , vol.3, no., pp.14061411 vol.3, 1999 [16] Ching-Chang Wong; Wei-Wen Wang; Ya-Ling Lee, Soccer robot design for FIRA Mirosot league, International Conference on MechatronicsTaiwan,t Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE [17] Kyung-Hoon Kim, Kuk-Won KO, Joo-Gon Kim, Su-Ho Lee, Hyung-Suck Cho, The Development of a Micro Robot System for Robot Soccer Game, [18] D. Ball1, G. Wyeth1, D. Cusack2. Design of a Team of Soccer Playing Robots, School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering School of Engineering,University of Queensland, Australia. [19] T. Wattanavekin et. al., The design of embedded systems for RoboCup Soccer Team : Plasma-Z. Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok [20] Vieira F. C. et al., Micro Robot Soccer teamMechanical and Hardware implementation. Universidad Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Campus Universitrio Lagoa Nova. [21]Li c et. al.,The Real Time And Embedded Robot Soccer control system.,Waseda University , japan. [22] Byoung-Ju Lee and Gwi-Tae Park:, A Robot in Intelligent Environment : Soccer Robot, International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics .September 19-23, 1999 [23] http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/ ., April 2011.

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