A camera-based target tracking system for football playing robots

This paper describes the design and the implementation of an application-driven target tracking system. The objective of the system is to improve the performance of a team of football playing robots in a “modified rules” football game. In this application, a throwing robot, the “quarterback”, equipped with a camera will attempt to locate a flashing LED mounted on the target robot, the “wide receiver”. Once located, the quarterback will adjust its throwing speed and throwing angle to increase the chances to hit the wide receiver. The results show that, the quarterback had a 100% success rate in locating the receiver when the distance between the two is no more than 15 feet. The location of the target is estimated with an average error of less than 0.31 inch.