One of the geekiest setups we saw at the Techfest was for FreeKick. Each participating team had to make 2 autonomous bots that reside on a (mini) football field against its opponents and four plastic balls. Whichever bot scores the maximum goals wins. Simple! But not that easy as it sounds. The bots have no cameras or map loaded on them to known the location of the balls or the size / dimension of the ground. Both teams get a feed from an overhead webcamera and their algorithms have to read the location of the balls from the ground and communicate to the bots. The 4-5 fps at which the feed is delivered to the bots is more than enough for them to play a live football match.
However calibrating the bots to the lighting at the event location was itself a challenge for many teams (20 mins is provided for the same). We spent close to an hour over there, hoping to see some action, but the bots took just too much time for calibration. Nevertheless its nice to see such complex ones amongst the mechanical Full Throttle and Robowars.
“It is not whether you win or lose, but how much you learn that counts!”
Suberb Game..
football is a very physical game and it really stretches your bones and muscles’,: