Open source robots play football
- Transfer
What could be cooler than a humanoid robot? Hey, of course - a humanoid robot that plays soccer! And you can buy this for yourself in just 25 pieces.
Developed by researchers at Bonn University, the robot is more than just another droid for the highly popular RoboCup competitions . The kid combines serious technical achievements and at the same time simple design and open source software, so that anyone can build their own bot. Software and drawings (.zip) are available on GitHub .
“I had the idea of opening a platform to make the lives of other developers easier,” said Dr. Sven Behnke, a specialist in computer technology. “Of course, such a robot, in principle, can do many things, but it is unlikely that in the near future it will learn something useful. This is a research project. ”The
robot, which deserves a more expressive name than NimbRo-OP , falls into the“ teen ”category of soccer robots, which corresponds to a height of at least a meter and a weight of about 6.6 kg. Twenty drives translate computer commands into human movements - walking, turning, hitting the ball, he even knows how to get out of a lying position.
“Some of these chips were already found in smaller robots,” says Behnke, “but the difficulty was the need to create toy worlds for them, for example, with steps that they could climb - as a result, they were impractical.” For large robots have their own characteristics, including a six-digit price and relative fragility. NimbRo-OP can interact with the real world, its production is much cheaper, it is easier to transport, and probably it is more durable. Behnke and company are always waiting for this baby to rise after a fall.
NimbRo-OP uses a dual-core AMD E-450 processor, which is larger than most football robots, has 2 gigabytes of memory and 64 gigabyte SSD. The software is based on DARwin-OP. The droid is equipped with a three-axis gyro and a Logitech C905 wide-angle camera, with which it is much easier for him to see the ball and the target. Power is supplied from 3.6Ah. a lithium-polymer battery, and ultra-fast Wi-Fi keeps in touch during competitions where it’s not so easy to catch a signal due to the large number of people connecting. The robot is very light, and its arms, legs and feet, made of carbon fiber, drive 20 Robotis Dynamixel servos.
“We wanted to make everything as simple as possible,” says Behnke. “People who participate in the competition just need to know what a screwdriver is to replace a broken engine.”
NimbRo-OP is only the first stage of the project, whose goal is to accelerate the development of robots by revealing the manufacturing process. Development will be useful both on and off-field, because these robots are potentially able to use tools, climb stairs, climb into places that are not accessible to other robots. You can order yourself the same for an initial price of € 20,000 plus taxes and shipping from the University of Bonn.
Meanwhile, the team is preparing to participate in RoboCup next June, which will be held in the Netherlands. “What I really hope for is that next year’s competition will be harder thanks to this new robot,” Behnke says. - “When there are no problems with the equipment, other teams that are more involved in software will join the competition.”