2. Robot Soccer System: Hardware and Firmware Components

Abstract

In a robot soccer game, individual team robots must be capable of communicating and moving in real time. That a soccer robot could receive and execute various motion commands, driving itself into proper postures at the right times, is crucial to the success of physical team coordination. Such real time capabilities need to be enabled by the hardware and firmware for a soccer robot, integrated in a suitable robot architecture.

This chapter presents the necessary background on the mechanical motion and basic architecture of a mobile robot. On the former, some mechanical structures for robot mobility via ‘rolling’ are examined; the kinematics of a differential-drive (two-wheel) robot is then presented. On the latter, the essentials of electronic hardware and firmware needed to build a differential-drive robot of a MiroSoT system are covered in su.cient detail.