Proceedings of the 9th IFAC Symposium Advances in Control

Education
The International Federation of Automatic Control
Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, June 19-21, 2012

Educational aspects of designing robot for

Eurobot contest
VARGA Dániel ∗ Kristóf CSORBA ∗∗ Dávid SZALÓKI ∗∗∗
Zoltán BECK ∗∗∗∗ Gábor TEVESZ †
Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Department of
Automation and Applied Informatics
∗
e-mail: Varga.Daniel@aut.bme.hu
∗∗
e-mail: kristof@aut.bme.hu
∗∗∗
e-mail: Szaloki.David@aut.bme.hu
∗∗∗∗
e-mail: Beck.Zoltan@aut.bme.hu
†
e-mail: tevesz@aut.bme.hu

Abstract: The Eurobot contest is an international robot building competition. This paper
presents an autonomous robot mechanical and electric design built to Eurobot 2011 robotics
contest. The robot collects the playing elements, builds towers and avoid collision with the
opponent robot. The building process, the control and vision algorithms are also presented.
We specify the used absolute (ultrasonic sonar) and relative (odometry) positioning methods,
and we describe their advantages and disadvantages. The hardware and software architecture,
navigation algorithms are also presented. This paper focuses on the educational aspects of the
project. We demonstrate how our team collaborates, and how the tasks were assigned to them
in order to comply their thesis.

Keywords: Autonomous mobile robots, Eurobot, Control education, Mechanical engineering,

Positioning systems, Obstacle avoidance, Robot vision

1. INTRODUCTION

Mobile robotics is one of the most dynamically improving

research field. Robots were appeared in our homes nowa-
days (e.g. vacuum cleaner robots), hence our department
places great emphasis on mobile robot education. During a
robot building project students learn a lot about mechan-
ics, electronics, software engineering and interdisciplinary
teamwork.
Department of Automation and Applied Informatics del-
egates student teams to Eurobot contest since 2003. The
first team was founded by Gábor Tevesz Dr. and four MSc
students. He is the team supervisor and project manager
of mobile robotics contests in our department. In 2011 our Fig. 1. Playing area
department organized twice RobonAUT robotics contest
(Csorba et al. (2012)), which is an autonomous robotics teams are playing a game in pairs, against each other. They
contest for our MSc students with his leading. The benefits have to operate in a fully autonomous way, without any
of educational robotics contest were recognized by other human interaction. Damaging and blocking the opponent
universities too (Hernando et al. (2011)), and we also is prohibited. The place and theme of the competition
found it useful to bring the theoretic knowledge to practice. changes from one year to another, but it is at all times
a skilful challenge (e.g. football, rugby, bowling and golf
Our team - RoBUTE - participates since 2007 starting
in recent years). The official rules of the actual challenge
with three team members (Kiss et al. (2008)). In 2011 we
are published about 8 months before the competition, the
have more than 10 members including software, electrical
teams have this time to prepare their robots.
and mechanical engineer students. Our team ranked at
13th place from 41 teams. The theme in 2011 is called Chess Up!, which is a modified
version of chess. The playing arena is shown in Fig. 1. It is a
Eurobot 2011 rules and regulations 210 cm wide and 300 cm long rectangle-shaped table. The
two concurrent robots must be placed to the starting areas,
Eurobot (Eurobot (2011)) is an international robotics and have to move as much playing elements (pawns, queens
contest organized every day since 1998. Robots built by the and kings) onto squares of their own color as possible to

978-3-902823-01-4/12/$20.00 © 2012 IFAC 342 10.3182/20120619-3-RU-2024.00074

9th IFAC Symposium Advances in Control Education
Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, June 19-21, 2012
Fig. 2. 3D robot model
collect match points. The actual playing color of the robots
is determined directly before the match. It is allowed to
stack the pawns to obtain extra points. The chess-pieces
are equipped with magnets to help exact positioning while
stacking them. Placing playing elements - including built
towers - to bonus squares multiplies the given points.
The robots could steal elements placed on opponent color,
and put them to their own color. Removing elements
from protected areas is strictly forbidden. One match
lasts 90 seconds and the robot which has more playing
elements or towers on its own color wins the match.
Safety issues and several limitations applies to the robots.
The maximum height of the robot is 350 mm, and the
maximum perimeter is 1200 mm before start, and 1400
mm during the match. Deliberately blocking, confusing or
damaging the opponent robot is prohibited.
This paper is organized as follows. The mechanical de-
sign and the electronic control system are discussed in
Section 2. Absolute and relative positioning methods with
vision-based position refinement algorithm are described
in Section 4. In Section 5 we deal with vision system
designed for locating playing elements. The navigation
algorithm and its software environment are included in
Section 6. The team collaboration and the educational
aspects are drawn in Section 7.
2. ROBOT DESIGN
The base of the robot hardware is an aluminium skeleton,
and the mechanical and electrical parts are attached to it.
The robot has
• two side arms and one lifting gripper for element
manipulation
• differential drive wheels for movement
• dedicated free running wheels for odometry
• distributed low-level electronics for actuators and
sensors
• industrial PC with Linux for high-level algorithms
• Microsoft Kinect for vision.
The 3D mechanical design is shown in Fig. 2. The robot
was designed in Autodesk Inventor Studio mechanical
CAD system.
The skeleton made of rectangle shaped aluminium beams.
Most parts were made of aluminium too, and were cut by
343
Fig. 3. Distributed electronic system
high pressure water. The robot has differential drive, and
the two driven wheels have coaxial shafts. This driving
method is very simple, but effective, because the robot
could rotate around its center point. The driving algorithm
is also very simple in this case. The wheels were driven
by brushless DC (BLDC) motors. We chose this motor
type, because of the size limitations of the robot. These
motors have the best power/volume ratio. In order to
reduce the slipping errors of odometry (See Section 4.1)
the robot was equipped with free running wheels for
position and orientation calculation. Odometry wheels
were strangulated with springs to the ground.
The front lifting manipulator grabs the playing elements.
The two grippers were rotated by two model servos. During
seeking, the grippers are opened. If a playing element was
got into the manipulator, a mechanical switch is pushed,
and the servos close the grippers. The element could be
lifted up in order to build towers. Two spindles were
placed to the sides of the manipulator, and a DC motor
spins them by means of ribbed belts and belt wheels. The
side arms are equipped with electromagnet. The pawns
contain neodymium, hence they could be lifted with the
electromagnet. The arms are actuated by model servos.
3. ELECTRONIC CONTROL SYSTEM
ARCHITECTURE
The theme of Eurobot contest varies every year, and the
mechanics should be redesigned. Hence the number of
sensors and actuators also vary. In order to make the
system flexible, we designed a distributed control system
shown on Fig. 3.
The main control unit is an industrial PC (AMD Geode
LX800 500 MHz Nano ITX board). The connection be-
tween the PC and the nodes is managed by a gateway.
Using CAN bus in mobile vehicles (including cars) is
prevalent. This bus architecture is very fault-tolerant in
noisy environment, hence the communication between low-
level nodes is implemented on CAN bus (Majsai (2008)).
3.1 Nodes
The main unit of the nodes is the TMS320F28xx Texas In-
struments DSP. The main features of this microcontroller
are listed below:
• 100 MHz internal system clock
9th IFAC Symposium Advances in Control Education
Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, June 19-21, 2012

• 100 MIPS
• 32-Bit fix point arithmetic
• 128K X 16 Flash, 18K X 16 SARAM
• 35 GPIOs
• CAN, UART, SPI modules
• Quadrature encoder interfaces
• 6 PWM modules
• 16 channel 12-Bit ADC
Every node consist of a Core Card and a specialized cou-
pling card. The circuits are connected in sandwich struc-
ture. Core Cards comprises DSPs and all suitable elec- Fig. 4. Free-running odometry wheel
tronics the DSPs need (e.g. crystal, connectors, switching
power supplies, etc.).

BLDC node The Faulhaber BLDC main motors are

driven by this node. The drive electronics were also pro-
vided with the motors, hence the only function of the
BLDC node is hosting the drive modules and attaching
to the Core Card. This node also calculates odometry,
thus the rotary encoders of free-running wheels are also
connected.

Model servo node Model servos are usually used in hobby

modeling. They are very compact: the motor, gearbox,
position feedback and driving electronics are integrated
in a cuboid housing (see Fig. 2). The servos needs 6V
power, and the position signal pulse. The duration of the
pulse is directly proportional to its shaft angle. The model
servo node produces the suitable power, and produces the
signals. Up to 6 servos could be attached.
Input node Basically two types of sensors are used:
distance sensors and microswitches. The Sharp GP2Y0A02
infrared distance sensor operates from 20 cm to 150 cm,
and generates analog output voltage depending on the
measured distance. This sensor can be used for detect-
ing opponent robot, measuring play elements height and
distance. We use the ADC inputs of TMS320F28xx DSP
for measuring the output voltage of maximum 8 sensors.
Every input is protected with clamp diodes and post-
amplifiers. Maximum 12 microswitches could be connected
to an input node.
DC motor and electromagnet node This node was de-
signed especially for this robot mechanics. Usually two DC
motors could be connected to a motor drive node. In our
case we have one DC motor for lifting the gripper console,
and two electromagnets those must provide bidirectional
magnetic field, which is very important. Generating re-
pulsive magnetic field is needed for releasing the playing
elements, because the neodymium magnets are strong
enough to attract the ferrit core. In this unfortunate case
the releasing position of the element is not definite. We did
not want to use two DC motor nodes, thus we contracted
them into one node. This node contains three full bridges,
and it can accept two quadrature encoders.
4. POSITIONING
Position and orientation information is indispensable in
mobile robotics. Two main types of positioning methods
are distinguished: absolute and relative. We discuss odom-
etry (relative) and ultrasonic positioning system (absolute)
Fig. 5. Differential driven robot platform
below. It worths using more than one positioning method
(Tsai (1998)), because unexpected events could occur dur-
ing the match, like collision. Besides relative positioning
methods cumulate inaccuracy errors.
4.1 Odometry
As mentioned in Sect. 2. free-running wheels are dedicated
for odometry calculation.
In Fig. 4 the mechanical design is shown. A rotary en-
coder is attached to the wheel’s shaft. The encoder has
two channels (A and B), and produces 2048 pulses per
revolution. Every rising and falling edge of both channels
are counted, that multiplies the pulses by 4. The diameter
of free-running wheels is 40 mm, and the resolution is
0,0434o per increments (8192 increments per revolution).
After one sampling interval we suppose that the left and
right wheel encoder increment change is NL and NR
(Borenstein et al. (1994)). The conversion factor (cm )
between encoder increments and linear wheel displacement
is
cm = π2Rn /Ce (1)
where Rn is nominal wheel radius, Ce is encoder resolu-
tion in increments per revolution. The incremental travel
distances are calculated by
∆sL/R,i = cm NL/R,i (2)
and the incremental linear displacement (∆si ) of the
center point of the robot is
∆si = (∆sR,i + ∆sL,i )/2 (3)

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9th IFAC Symposium Advances in Control Education
Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, June 19-21, 2012
The incremental change of orientation
∆θi = (∆sR,i − ∆sL,i )/W (4)
where W is the wheelbase of the robot, ideally measured
between the two contacting points between the wheels and
floor. The new relative position and orientation can be
computed as follows:
The incremental change of orientation
θtemp = θi−1 + ∆θi /2 (5)
xi = xi−1 + ∆si cosθtemp (6)
xi = yi−1 + ∆si sinθtemp (7)
θi = θtemp + ∆θi /2 (8)
Odometry is simple to implement, but it has disadvan-
tages. The systematic and non-systematic errors are cu-
mulating during the movement. Systematic errors:
• relative wheel radius difference
• wheel radius deviation of nominal
• wheelbase deviation of nominal
• finite encoder resolution
• sampling error
The first three systematic errors could be eliminated with
UMBMark calibrating method (Borenstein et al. (1994)).
The last two errors could not be eliminated, but they could
be considered, when the position and orientation error is
estimated.
The non-systematic errors:
• soil roughness
• wheel slipping because of
· slippery soil
· high acceleration
· collision
· wheel contact point displacement
Non-systematic errors could not be eliminated, but re-
ducing their effect is possible with accurate fabrication of
mechanics. Even so position refinement is needed during
motion. If the robot has microswitches in front, the posi-
tion and orientation refinement is possible with boundary
walls. Absolute positioning methods could be used for
refinement too.
4.2 Ultrasonic positioning
Fig. 6 shows the ultrasonic trilateration scheme used for
absolute position measurement. Two fixed beacons (mas-
ter and slave beacon) are placed in fixed order in the
corners of the playing area. Each beacon is equipped with
four ultrasonic receiver capsules, because the receivers
have limited detecting range. The transmitter is placed on
robots (opponent and our robot). The ultrasonic trans-
mitter is placed over a cone-shaped reflector for omni-
directional radiation. The distance between beacons and
the speed of sound is known, hence the positions of the
robots could be determined by measuring the time of flight
(TOF) between robots and beacons. The master beacon
controls the whole localization process. It synchronizes all
units, computes the coordinates and accurately measures
345
Fig. 6. Ultrasonic localization system
the ambient temperature for compensation. The speed of
sound is calculated by
r
T
c(T ) = 331.3 (9)
273.15
where c is the speed of sound, and T is ambient temper-
ature in Kelvin (Everest (1989)). Temperature measure
error provides distance error. The calculated distance s is
the product of TOF and speed of sound, thus the absolute
error of distance measurement (∆s) is calculated as the
total derivative of c · t:
∂s ∂s
∆s ∼
= ∆c + ∆t = t · ∆c + c · ∆t (10)
∂c ∂t
The temperature measure error is ∆T , and the TOF error
is negligible, the absolute error:
∂c 1 ∆T
∆s ∼= t · ∆c = t · ∆T = . . . = · s · (11)
∂T 2 T
If s = 5 m, T = 298 K and temperature measure error
∆T = 1 K, the distance error is ∆s = 84 mm. Minimizing
this error a platinum RTD temperature sensor is placed on
the master. The resistance of RTD is measured with four-
wire measurement method in order to reduce temperature
measurement error significantly. After the TOFs were
given, the robot position is at the intersection of two
circles. This method provides only position information
with 50 mm accuracy, thus we need other manners for
refinement.
5. VISION SYSTEM
Microsoft Kinect is a popular accessory for XBOX 360
game console. Many universities are using it for machine
vision, because of its low price and depth image capability.
5.1 Vision-based position refinement
The Microsoft Kinect contains a normal VGA camera and
an infrared camera for depth image. An infrared laser
device projects structured light to the environment, and
the Kinect calculates depth image from the distortion of
the structured image. For position refinement the VGA
camera image is used, because the playing area is chess-
painted. First the accurate position and orientation is
9th IFAC Symposium Advances in Control Education
Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, June 19-21, 2012
assumed. The supposed intersection points of the playing
area are projected to the screen. The algorithm searches
intersecting lines in order to find the vertices. The robot
position and orientation information is not accurate, hence
the found and the projected points are displaced. If the
position and orientation error is small, the compliance be-
tween projected and found points is given. With known in-
ner camera parameters the robot coordinate system could
be refined after applying a camera calibration (Zhang
(2000)).
5.2 Element localization
The main task of the vision system is locating playing
elements. Pawns are cylinders with 200 mm diameter and
50 mm height (Eurobot (2011)). All the pawns have 2
magnets in their center on each side. The magnet’s south
poles are on the bottom side. The king and queen are
built like a pawn with an optional figure (chess piece) on
its top. They are 230 mm high. They differ in shape, and
they have barcode on their sides. At the beginning of the
match, playing elements are placed in different areas (See
Fig. 1).
• 9 pawns are placed in the central ”chessboard” part
of the table randomly
• 6 pawns are placed in the two green dispensing areas
on each side of the table (3 pawns per one dispensing
zone)
• 2 kings and 2 queens are placed in the two green
dispensing areas on each side of the table (1 king and
1 queen per one dispensing zone) arranged in random
positions
The arrangement is mirrored to the centerline of the
playing area. After the elements were placed, the robot can
not be configured, hence the vision system must detect the
arrangement.
Locating playing elements has two phases: detecting the
initial arrangement and detecting elements during the
match. The common part of these algorithms is their first
step. The position and orientation of the Kinect comparing
to the robot reference point is known. Hence the depth
image could be transformed from an isometric view to top
view. More higher an element the higher value is given.
Both vision algorithms are on demand, thus they are only
calculated, when the high-level control algorithm requests
it.
5.3 Determining initial element arrangement
Before start the possible positions of playing elements are
known. The only task is to decide whether there is an
element in the possible location or not. Before start the
robot is standing in starting zone in a known position, thus
the vision system knows where the possible positions are. If
there is a higher value in depth image in these positions,
a playing element is noticed. In order to determine the
arrangement of kings and queens in the green dispensing
area, a threshold is given. If the depth image value is higher
than a threshold a king or queen is noticed.
346
5.4 Detecting elements during the match
Locating elements during the match is more different,
because they could not be expected in known positions.
If higher value point in depth image is found a filling is
started. Every points higher than the ground is added
to this group belongs to element(s). The following tower
configurations are possible:
• 1 pawn
• 2 pawns
• 1 pawn and a king or queen
• 2 panws and a king or queens
Other configurations are invalid. The height of the towers
is rising in the enumeration. Hence the value of the highest
point in the group in depth image is unequivocally deter-
mines the tower configuration. The center of the supposed
element is the center of gravity of the group in depth
image. The algorithm does not care with agglutinated
elements, because during the tests it did not seem nec-
essary to distinguish them. In this case the grippers could
separate the elements.
6. NAVIGATION
In previous years the robot was controlled by a self devel-
oped state machine. We have problems during matches,
because adjusting the strategy was a difficult task: adding
a new state was an error source. In this year we use LUA
script language detailed in the next section.
6.1 Software architecture
The software architecture has four levels.
(1) LUA script level
(2) LUA implementation level
(3) Gateway level
(4) DSP controller level
The high-level navigation algorithm is implemented at
LUA script level. LUA is a script language with sophis-
ticated parallelization. It is small and easy to embed. It
has an internal state machine hidden from user. The par-
allelization is solved with coroutines. The parallel tasks run
collaterally, and they wait for each other in a determined
program location.
The LUA implementation level contains the LUA inter-
preter, the state machine. This level is implemented in
C++ programming language.
The gateway level is responsible for communication be-
tween nodes and control algorithm. This level is imple-
mented in two hardwares. The compliance between LUA
functions and C++ functions is implemented on the indus-
trial PC, but the low-level communication interface runs
on DSP-based gateway.
The low-level control functions implemented at DSP con-
troller level. Every node has specialized functions (e.g.
speed controller, odometry calculation, sensor scaling), but
the CAN-based communication is common.
6.2 Navigation algorithm
The robot follows a simple strategy. After start it
9th IFAC Symposium Advances in Control Education
Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, June 19-21, 2012
Fig. 7. Navigation algorithm display
The robot movement consist of two primitives: straight
movement and rotation around reference point.
After start the robot tries to get the closest 2 pawns with
sidearms, and seeks the closest king or queen, and tries to
grab it. If the robot has pawns it searches for king or queen,
and if it has a one of them, it seeks pawns. If the robot has
two pawns and one king/queen, it tries to build a tower.
Weights are assigned to squares (See Fig. 6). Smaller values
are the better, and only the weights on our color is valid.
The aspects of value assignment are the following:
• the bonus squares are better (B5, D5)
• protected squares are better (F1, F5)
• squares at the walls are better (F3, A2, A4, A6)
The location of the opponent robot is provided by the
ultrasonic sonar system. A safe zone is defined around the
maximum perimeter of the opponent robot. The width of
this zone is equal to the maximum diameter of our robot.
The reference point of the robot should not be within
this zone. During path planning the robot simulates the
possible straight path to the desired playing element. If it is
not possible to reach the selected element, the weight level
is raised, and another element is selected for gathering.
7. TEAM COLLABORATION AND CONCLUSIONS
Eurobot is an educational contest, thus our goal is in-
volving as much students as we can. Two departments
collaborated in this project. The mechanical design was
made by two graduating mechanical engineer students
as a BSc thesis. They were consulted by a PhD student
and a master teacher from Department of Mechatronics,
Optics and Engineering Informatics. The major part of
this project belongs to Department of Automation and
Applied Informatics. Two electronic engineering MSc stu-
dents (Zoltán Beck and Dávid Szalóki) designed and pro-
grammed the nodes and low level communications. One
software engineering BSc student made the navigation al-
gorithm, and a PhD student implemented the vision. Two
PhD students (Varga Dániel and Domokos Kiss) consulted
the team and managed the project with the supervising
347
of Gábor Tevesz Dr. associate professor. Beside electric
and software design our students came to know teamwork
difficulties, and experienced well desired success in Russia,
Astrakhan, where the contest was held. The 13th place
in this famous international robotics contest is a good
reinforcement of worth of hard learning and working.
Our robot showed good figure. Mechanics was strong
enough to survive the long car trip to Russia, and accurate
enough to play a whole match without odometry calibra-
tion. The Kinect seemed to be a good choice, when our
robot was playing alone. If the opponent robot was also
equipped with Kinect, the vision was failed, because the
Kinects were interfering. We lost one match for the sake
of it. The motors and servos were fast and strong enough,
but the lifting speed of the console was very slow. In a
few words in this year our team performed according to
expectations
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work is connected to the scientific program of the
”Development of quality-oriented and harmonized R+D+I
strategy and functional model at BME” project. This
project is supported by the New Széchenyi Plan (Project
ID: TÁMOP-4.2.1/B-09/1/KMR-2010-0002).
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