Build Your Own Soccer-Playing Robot

An anonymous reader writes "This article by a Ph.D student at Shanghai JiaoTong University (SJTU) Research Institute of Robotics describes an RTLinux-powered robot that placed fifth in the most recent RoboCup competition. The robot has two color cameras for visual sensing along with a laser range finder (LRF) for goalkeeper location, and a wireless LAN allows communication among the robots on SJTU's team. The robot's embedded operating system is Red Hat Linux enhanced with the RTLinuxPro real-time extension."

Comments

5th?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be better to learn from the team who came first?

Re:5th?

[phaln]

Fifth place needs love, too!

Re:5th?

[saunabad]

Wouldn't it be better to learn from the team who came first?

How the hell is this comment modded insightful? Parent obviously has no clue how much time, effort and skill is required to make an autonomous robot at all. I'd consider it to be a major success if those robots work well enough to play soccer. Coming first or fifth in a tournament, well that's quite irrelevant. Even those teams that don't win, may have some technical areas which are more advanced to those that win.

Red Hat = embedded?

[Alwin Henseler]

From the summary: "The robot's embedded operating system is Red Hat Linux enhanced with the RTLinuxPro real-time extension."

Using Red Hat for embedding in a robot application? Sounds like an awful poor choice of tools, if you ask me.

Re:Red Hat = embedded?

[KingPunk]

well, Linux, is only the kernel. the rest is just choice of userland tools/patches etc.

RTL stands for Real Time Linux, and its a patch that can be easily applied to any Linux kernel
that is relatively recent, but iirc, it works best on 2.6+.. Redhat, whilist a crappy "OS" overall due to their way of handling stuff, doesn't make their kernel any less effective as a RealTime kernel.
espically since its commerically supported if you coughed up the dough.

props to all my unix brethren ;)

Re:Red Hat = embedded?

[EnderWigginsXenocide]

Really, they won't use anything as cool as you think they'll use. Probably just some kids thinking they're playing a game running these robotic warriors..err..soccer players...by remote control. But, look at my handle... what else would you expect me to think of?

Re:Red Hat = embedded?

[LnxAddct]

Err actually out of the available choices, Red Hat was probably the best to go with. Red Hat does more with the kernel and embedded linux systems then any other major distro on the market. Who would you have recommended?
Regards,
Steve

Re:Red Hat = embedded?

[SnowZero]

That's why my team uses Debian :P

Personally we've never really found a use for Realtime extensions; Robots are a pretty soft-realtime application becuase the complex algorithms need to be interruptable for debugging. It's way too easy for vision or path planning to take more than the alloted time.

Plain Linux does pretty well at handling the event loop; Most teams are simply event driven off of vision frames, with the motion control loop handled by custom embedded hardware on the robot.

Re:Red Hat = embedded?

[mangu]

we've never really found a use for Realtime extensions ... Plain Linux does pretty well at handling the event loop

Have to agree with you on that. I've been doing real-time Linux programs for the last six years, and only studied RT-Linux a bit to come to the conclusion that it's only worth the effort for some extreme cases.

OK, my systems aren't true "real time", so what? When they have been running for years (longest continuous uptime nearly 4 years, broken by a failed power supply) who cares about the academic definition of "real time"?

Re:Red Hat = embedded?

[Rattencremesuppe]

Using Red Hat for embedding in a robot application? Sounds like an awful poor choice of tools, if you ask me.

It's no embedded system in the traditional sense - basically, they just put a general purpose laptop on wheels.

Re:Red Hat = embedded?

[Thing 1]

When they have been running for years (longest continuous uptime nearly 4 years, broken by a failed power supply) who cares about the academic definition of "real time"?

Uptime is orthogonal to whether the OS can guarantee a timeslice to a particular program within a particular period of time.

Re:Red Hat = embedded?

[mangu]

Uptime is orthogonal to whether the OS can guarantee a timeslice to a particular program within a particular period of time.

No, it's not. A system in the BSOD state cannot guarantee any timeslice at all to any application. And when I say the system has been runnig, I mean the application has been working correctly, getting all the timeslices it needs.

From your answer I gather that you didn't understand anything that I wrote. Let me rephrase it. With the normal Linux task scheduler, for most so-called "real time" applications, the probability that an application will not get the timeslice it needs is very low. The MTBF (mean time between failures) due to the task scheduler being unable to run the real time when needed is higher than the MTBF due to hardware failure for a typical spacecraft telemetry processing task in an industrial grade computer.

OK, now go pick your nits.

Re:Red Hat = embedded?

[Thing 1]

No, it's not.

Yes, in fact, it is: the definition of "real-time" says nothing about the uptime of the machine, only that the machine must guarantee a process a certain amount of CPU time within a given period of time while the machine is running.

From your answer I gather that you didn't understand the point I was trying to make: just because it's working for you and hasn't failed in 4 years doesn't make it "Real-Time" (TM).

That's all. I'm happy that it works for you.

Linux 1, Microsoft Nil

[tiktok]

They were experimenting with robot soccer players that ran on Windows, but unfortunately they couldn't get them to run for 90 minutes straight.

Re:Linux 1, Microsoft Nil

[billsoxs]

So did the robots turn blue and die or did the OS need to be reloaded?

Re:Linux 1, Microsoft Nil

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Even Microsoft's own gaming development company made fun of the Blue screen in Halo 2 Zanzibar map.

Re:Linux 1, Microsoft Nil

[ScytheBlade1]

...up until you realize that "Bungie" != "Microsoft". I'd hardly call a 3rd party company "Microsoft's own".

Re:Linux 1, Microsoft Nil

[antoy]

I don't mind a MS joke guys, but can we please move to the 'security' stuff, which is at least topical? It's not funny when for most purposes, and most people, today's Windows works for months straight.

Re:Linux 1, Microsoft Nil

[maotx]

For those who don't know, on the upper level is a computer on the defense side that opens up the main gate into the base. After you activate this, the screen goes blue with the infamous BSOD.

Re:Linux 1, Microsoft Nil

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I can imagine that the Bungee team might be able to slip some things in here and there. Bungee was primarily a Mac game developer so I can imagine them not treating their new employer as sacred.

Re:Linux 1, Microsoft Nil

[SnowZero]

Laugh all you want, but Windows-based teams dominate 2 out of the 3 RoboCup soccer leagues. For small size, the top three teams are Windows-based:
1 - Fu-Fighters (Germany)
2 - RoboRoos (Australia)
3 - LuckyStar (Singapore)
4 - CMRoboDragons (USA & Japan) - go Linux!
In the dogs (Aibos), the Aibo itself is running Sony's Aperios operating system, but then there's the platform on which all the development is based:
1 - German Team (Germany, duh)
2 - UTS Unleashed (Australia)
3 - NuBots (Australia)
4 - UPennalizers (USA) - mixed Win/Linux IIRC
The remainder is the midsize, in which Linux does very well. That's because large embedded systems (i.e. 40cm cubic robots) are very well suited for Linux and not so much for Windows (For example, being able to ssh into the robot and run code is nice).

The CMU teams of which I am a part (CMRoboDragons, CMPack) are 100% Linux and proud of it, but Windows does much better than you'd think. Cornell's small size team even gets money from Microsoft (they're a 4-time champion).

Re:Linux 1, Microsoft Nil

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

I'd hardly call a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft "a 3rd party company"... They're even located at Redmond.

Re:Linux 1, Microsoft Nil

[adeydas]

You mean the robos really started to work... OMG that's a great achivement for Microsoft...

Re:Linux 1, Microsoft Nil

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Depends on your Karma, or something. Every month I encounter a blue screen of death sitting by one of my colleagues. (Windows experience (good name!) and 2000 (poor name!) ). And in just under a year of using windows on my working computer, the thing refused to boot --- safe mode or no.

Well, I have no time for fighting the OS. Installed first SuSE (which was crappy), then Debian (which needed a crucial package, libc6.1 or something) and finally stuck with Mandrake. NOW it works. The things we have to do... :)

Wish it could have been Gentoo.

Re:Linux 1, Microsoft Nil

[antoy]

Yeah, I guess it depends on Karma, or hardware, or something.On the Linux side, I thought Debian was more than satisfactory, the libc thing sounds like a Karma thing too : )

Re:Linux 1, Microsoft Nil

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Yeah, the Debian thing could probably be fixed, probably by using some unofficial package source or something. I needed it to install db2.

I just didn't want to go there. Going for unofficial sources is just asking for trouble.

Robo-Fans.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they going to build robot fans that tear up the town when their team loses?

Re:Robo-Fans.

[Kufat]

Or when their team wins.

Re:Robo-Fans.

[Hobadee]

Don't you read Slashdot!? They already did!
Pentagon To Send Robot Soldiers to Iraq

Soccer cyborgs

[Anonymous Coward]

Could these be used in combat? Just replace the soccer ball with a rocket launcher.

--
Get a Free Mac Mini! See Website for Details.

Re:Soccer cyborgs

[Tellalian]

I hardly think kicking rocket launchers at people will be an effective military strategy.

Re:Soccer cyborgs

[SnowZero]

AAAARRRGHHH!
As any member of any RoboCup team would tell you, NO! It's not that we don't like BattleBots, but (1) they aren't autonomous, and (2) we get asked this like 50 times a year. Fully autonomous Soccer is a very different reasearch problem from constructing a RC fighting vehicle.

(sorry, I'm a bit touchy on this subject)

Cyberball, I have not forgotten thee.

[phaln]

I hear predictions about robots taking the World Cup in 2050, and it certainly seems like we're moving that way. Still, I'm holding out for some Cyberball-style action -- that's where it's at.

Maradonabot & Obligatory Futurama

[bildungsroman_yorick]

After the robots done performing it's primary objective is the secondary objective becoming a fat, cocaine snorting Hedonismbot?

Andres Escobar

[Michael Hunt]

Now all we gotta do is wait for this thing to score an own goal and it'll get shot at the airport on its way home.

I love soccer fans :)

What's next?

[GuyMannDude]

First we got robot soldiers and now we got robot soccer players. What we really need are robotic Mexican soccer announcers:

cout << "He shoots!" << endl;
cout << "He scores!" << endl;
cout << "G";
for (int i = 0; i < 10000; ++i)
{
cout << "o";
}
cout << "al!" << endl;

GMD

Re:What's next?

[zangdesign]

Nah, what we need are some robot soccer hooligans!

2050 World Cup Championship

[dhj]

Last time I saw a post about this on Slashdot Vision was boasting they would be able to win the World Cup in 2050... I felt the need to call bullshit on that boast, but for the wrong reason.

The reason I called bullshit originally is because I remember seeing an amazing achievement in robot dexterity in 1998. The Honda prototype, Asimo, slowly, precisely and precariously walk up a few steps without toppling. After seeing that robot hobble up some stairs, my response to a humanoid robot with soccer player dexterity within 45 years was a predictable... Bullshit.

If you were thinking the same thing... Take a look at these pics and vids. They are impressive. They just might have soccer player dexterity by 2050. Without having to worry about getting tired or even slowing down they could pose a major threat (in soccer, put your tinfoil hat back on).

However, I'm still going to call bullshit. Mainly because soccer, unlike chess, deals with full freedom of motion in a 3D field. Computers only recently were able to master chess on a world competition level with intense processing. Chess is played on an 8x8 field, with significant, but limited, branching. The 3D nature of soccer (or even the 2D nature of novice soccer) presents branching that could be arguably higher than that of Go. Combine that with the fact that soccer players aren't going to wait a turn for the computer to "think". This is my new reason for calling bullshit on a Robot 2050 World Cup Champion.

But, damn if those robot control systems aren't impressive. I wouldn't mind eating these words. Robots are cool.

--David

Re:2050 World Cup Championship

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, go rent a Fifa Soccer videogame.

The strategy of soccer is not an insurmountable AI problem.

The problem in soccer is moving one's body to where it needs to be in the time it needs to get there. The problems are first visual (how does the robot know where it is, it's team mates, the ball, etc.) and second control (how does the robot know how to run without falling over, kick at the right speed, etc.). Now, in a videogame, these things aren't issues, just the strategy. Thus, you can see that the strategy part has basically already been solved by going out and renting anyone of a bazillion soccer videogames.

Re:2050 World Cup Championship

[SnowZero]

Remember, only the *best* team has to beat humans by 2050. It's a lofty goal, but with something like 150+ teams pre-registered for 2005 (total for 4 leagues), I think we might be able to reach it. I've been doing RoboCup since 1999, and you would not believe the progress just in the last 6 years. I do think its self-centered BS for any particular team to claim *they* will reach the 2050 goal, but I don't think its so bad to say *some* team will.

Humanoids need to advance in hardware, but look at the other robot and simulation leagues and you will see that strategy is coming along quite well already. When I started working on small size, humans with joysticks could beat a RoboCup team. Now humans get demolished. Speed is exactly the computer's advantage -- they are dumb in high-level strategy, but they outdo you in driving and kicking accuracy. Plus they never blink and have a reaction time of 100ms for almost any sort of change. Humans have *at best* 100ms reaction times, and much slower if they get into an unexpected situation. Check out our videos

Your robot won't have a laser range finder

[Anonymous Coward]

LRFs go for several thousands of dollars currently. Unless you have a lot of cash lying around, I doubt the "build it yourself" robot will have one.

Re:yea but

[bbkingadrock]

who's workin' on the goalie?

Re:In AD 2101

[DigitalHammer]

All robo-fans had too much motor oil to drink...

And the World Cup was beginning.

Town Mayor: What happen?
Civil Servant: Our team just lost us the game!
Secretary: We get phone call.
Mayor: What!
Secratary: Main line turn on!
RoboFan: What the hell, gentleman!!
RoboFan: All your town are belong to us.
RoboFan: You are on the way to roboblivion.
Mayor: What you say!!
RoboFan: You have no chance to survive make your time.
RoboFan: Ha Ha Ha Ha...
Mayor: Take off every Electromagnet!
Mayor: You know what you doing.
Mayor: Move 'Electromagnet'.
Mayor: For great justice.

---

In any case, lets just hope future drunk robo-fans arent controlled by skynet. :-P

I can see it now...

[Berserker76]

01000111 01001111 01000001 01001100 00100001 00100001 00100001 00100001 00100001 00100001 (GOAL!!!!!!)

Mod parent TROLL

[alphakappa]

Would you also care to explain why most of us who do not have the knowledge to come 5th cannot learn from them?

Amazing

[Pan T. Hose]

That's amazing. Years ago kids at school used to call me a robot-playing sucker, and now I'm building my own soccer-playing robot. Who's laughing now? Losers!

Re:Amazing

[hkroger]

Ha haa, you robot-playing sucker!

The robot wont overtake real soccer players

[Timesprout]

Until they build a robot that obsesses about its appearance and is embarassingly caught shagging the nanny robot.

They build an expensive robot that indulges in some high frequency snorting to improve its 'off the field' performance.

They build another expensive robot that 'forgets' to turn up for mandatory checks and goes shopping instead.

A robot admits it tried to deliberately damage another robot in a revenge tackle.

Slapper robots are developed which can be 'roasted' by the football robots.

One of the new generation super robots is photographed leaving a brothel populated by pvc wearing granny robots (probably the current robots recycled a few times).

Re:you sure?

[Rosonowski]

That's technically sonar, but might be just as good for simple applications.

Results from the IBM versus SCO match

[bobdotorg]

SCO was disqualified for repeatedly faking injuries for a red card.

Re:Red cards?? That's what football is all about!

[tuxette]

I'll be more impressed with the Totti model that spits just as well...

Re:odd..

[SnowZero]

Most RoboCup mid-size robots run Linux. This team isn't at all unusual. In other leagues it's a different story, see my earlier post on the subject.

Re:Red cards?? That's what football is all about!

[SnowZero]

2 of the 3 RoboCup soccer leauges already have red cards, believe it or not. Probably the craziest thing I've ever seen in 6 years of RoboCup was in 1999, in a game between FU-Fighters (Germany) and RobotIS (Korea) in the small size leauge. Small size robots are up to 180mm in diameter, and up to 150mm tall. Germany had robots where the "kicker" was an 800 RPM spinning aluminum metal plate, while robotIS had tiny robots (from another leauge). At one point Germany's robot kicked one of the RobotIS robots completely into the air! It did a complete flip, and when it landed, it just kept on playing, which was almost more amazing. Not suprisingly there were several red cards in that game.

HAMMER REVOLUTION --;

[clubhouse]

robots beating humans is definitely antihammer hammerrevolution.com --;

Re:HAMMER REVOLUTION --;

[clubhouse]

hammerrevolution.com
--;

Small-size leauge resources

[SnowZero]

If you really want to build your own, why not start from a team with open-source software or published robot designs?

RoboRoos - Currently the software release seems to be down, but a friendly email to them would probably fix it.
CMDragons - My team (whee shameless plug). Our complete 2002 software is available (runs on Debian). RedZone robotics is currently selling a robot based on our design.
RoboRoos - These guys have done very well the last couple of years, and have a fair amount of information online as well.

Re:Small-size leauge resources

[SnowZero]

Oops! Someone pointed out to me that the first link above should read Roobots.

its called Football not Soccer !

[wildBoar]

Well at least where I come from.

No accident that the organising world body is Called FIFA, the european one EUFA and the English one FA.

Top marks to the person who can tell me what FA stands for !

Re:its called Football not Soccer !

[UserGoogol]

Soccer is short for Association Football, which is the name you call that kind of Football for when you want to distinguish it from Aussie Rules.

Re:its called Football not Soccer !

[wildBoar]

not true, nobody gives a toss about Ozzy rules except Ozzy.

Re:its called Football not Soccer !

[GWTPict]

Apart from the fact that he does rule, what's an addled Brummy vocalist got to do with football?

docs?

[hasst]

Dude, this is a Chinese Robot! Based on my previous experience with rare chinese hardware it does not have any documentation and it will take you days before finding out how the darn thing is supposed to work. So, I'm still waiting for the violent iron made german robot that plays Rammstein, kicks ass and from time to time wants to take over the world. It's fun, expensive, and well documended (german engineering at it's best!). History will prove me right ;-)

Re:docs?

[ultranova]

So, I'm still waiting for the violent iron made german robot that plays Rammstein, kicks ass and from time to time wants to take over the world. It's fun, expensive, and well documended (german engineering at it's best!).

And I'm waiting for the Japanese-made household android with overly large eyes, cat ears and a hidden hentai mode ;).

Unfortunately, catgirl androids might qualify as weapons of mass destruction :(.

Maybe...

[GroeFaZ]

...but your English teacher will prove you wrong.

Mod grandparent up

[Pan T. Hose]

That's amazing. Years ago kids at school used to call me a robot-playing sucker, and now I'm building my own soccer-playing robot. Who's laughing now? Losers!

Ha haa, you robot-playing sucker!

Seriously, I have no idea why the grandparent post is not Score:5, Funny yet.

strategy?

[The Creator]

Suppose that the robot is simply capable of running 250mph with the ball...

And the robot goalie? Simply following the ball and capable of accelerating with 50G...

Re:strategy?

[GWTPict]

Mmm, that's handball, free kick to the opposition.

LRF = Laser Range Finder?

[Aaron Denney]

I always thought it mean "Little Rubber Feet".

Why bother with Linux or Windows?

[pnewhook]

Why would you bother with either of those OS's anyway? It's not like you need any preemptive multitasking features in such a small application anyway.

The teams would be better off ditching their OS and putting everything in a tight loop on a simple roll your own kernel. The time saved not having to configure the OS and its real time extensions could be instead spent on game logic.

Re:Why bother with Linux or Windows?

[pnewhook]

Yeah, that's a great point. Writing an entire kernel and low level operating system before you even start the application framework is -much- easier. Why didn't I think of that before?

My point was you don't need all of that crap. You don't need anything more complicated than a simple loop and you read the hardware timer to do precision timing operations for each of your processing sections. It is impossible to time things more precisely than this method, regardless of the operating system you choose.

The boot section would take all of 5 to 10 lines of code, so yes it IS much easier.

Re:Why bother with Linux or Windows?

[HeghmoH]

Actually, having a fully preemptive multithreaded enviroment is incredibly useful for a robot.

In my wheeled two-motor robot using a Lego Mindstorms as the computer, I spawned several threads at startup. One thread handled navigation; ten times a second it woke up, read the current position of the wheels, and updated the robot's knowledge of its position and orientation. Another thread handled incoming communications over the IR link with the main computer. Another thread handled low-level driving routines, making up for asymmetrical motor strengths and ground conditions so that the robot drove in mostly a straight line or a smooth turn.

It is vastly easier to do all of these things when you can plunk them all in separate threads and have them work independently. You could, of course, write your own scheduling system to take care of all of these tasks, but by the time you've finished you'll just have a buggy, under-tested version of the OS that you were trying to get rid of in the first place.

Re:Why bother with Linux or Windows?

[pnewhook]

At a certain point of complexity, I fully agree to use a real OS. However for many of these smaller applications, an OS is overkill.

Not every application needs an operating system. Remember they landed on the moon with a computer that had only 4k of storage. That computer definitely did not have an RTOS.

Re:Why bother with Linux or Windows?

[pnewhook]

How do you know this? Have you ever participated? Do you think all the participants are stupid? I hate people like you.

I know this because I am a systems engineer at a well known space robotics company, i.e. I do embedded systems for a living.

I don't think they're stupid. Maybe they just took an approach they know and are familiar with. That's often easier than an unfamiliar approach regardless of how simple it is.

Re:Maradonabot & Obligatory Futurama

[GWTPict]

Only once you've handled the ball into the net thereby knocking England out.

Maradona = Cheating bastard.

Re:Wrong term.

[jack_call]

nah robooligans, u gotta contract it

Here's a quarter, buy yourself a clue

[HeghmoH]

whois bungie.com
[snip]
Administrative Contact:
Domain Administrator (37676006O) DOMAINS@MICROSOFT.COM
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
US
425-882-8080
[etc.]

Bungie Studios is just a division of Microsoft now. Bungie Inc. no longer exists.

Standard Choice Re:Red Hat = embedded?

[CDMA_Demo]

I work in a major mobile-computing company, and from what I know redhat is a popular embedded linux OEM. They make RedBoot -- an equivalent of lilo for embedded devices, and customized kernels for your devices.

So...

[eremitic]

what does this mean for drug testing in soccer? Will they be scanning the robots for P2P applications instead?

End the lockout

[PygmySurfer]

With no end in site with regards to the NHL lockout, how about creating a hockey playing robot? :)

Re:Maradonabot & Obligatory Futurama

[lgalindo]

... but definitively he could pass 5, 6 or 7 english-bots in order to make the second goal.