The UBC Thunderbots aim to compete in the annual international Robocup competition and conference, held next year in Mexico. This conference and competition is one of the largest robotic gatherings in the world, hosting over 3000 participants from over 40 different countries over 7 days. The conference aims to promote research in Artificial Intelligence, robotics, and related fields. There are multiple leagues of competition ranging from the small league to the humanoid league. Robocup's long term goal is to have a fully autonomous humanoid robotic team that is capable of competing against a world class soccer team by 2050.
You can learn more about robocup at www.robocup.org.

Small Size League

Our team is competing in the small sized soccer league, which puts two teams of five small sized robots up against each other.

The robots must have a diameter smaller than 18cm and a height of less than 15cm. They are capable of kicking, dribbling, chipping, and passing all autonomously and without collision.

About The Project

Creating a team of autonomous soccer playing robots takes a combination of mechanical dexterity, precision control, accurate image recognition, smart artificial intelligence and substantial integration.

Together the robots work like five fingers of a hand, controlled by a brain and watched by eyes. In order to have robots automatically go after the ball, a sensor unit and a brain are required. A camera mounted on top of the field acts as the eyes. This camera sends information regarding the position of all the objects on the field to the main AI system. The AI system processes the data, comes up with a strategy, and then sends commands wirelessly to each robot.

Details

Full details regarding the research, specifications and design of our robot can be found on the Robocup Small Sized League website. Click here to read it.