An Autonomous Omnidirectional Robot.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Robotics Volume 2010, Article ID 857594, 9 pages doi:10.1155/2010/857594 Research Article An Autonomous Omnidirectional Robot Yanfei Liu,1 Jiaxin Zhao,2 Josh Apple,1 Torrey Frank,1 Matthew Saylor,1 and Ted Siegel1 1 Department of Engineering, Indiana Univeristy-Purdue University Fort Wayne, 2101 E. Coliseum boulevard, Fort Wayne, IN 46805-1499, USA 2 West Hills College Lemoore, 555 College Avenue, Lemoore, CA 93245-9098, USA Correspondence should be addressed to Yanfei Liu, liu@ Received 15 July 2010; Revised 1 November 2010; Accepted 17 December 2010 Academic Editor: Yangmin Li Copyright © 2010 Yanfei Liu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. RoboCup is an international research and education initiative, which aims to foster artificial intelligence and robotics research by using competitive soccer as a standard problem. This paper presents a detailed engineering design process and the outcome for an omni-directional mobile robot platform for the Robocup Middle Size League competition. A prototype that can move omnidirectionally with kicking capability was designed, built, and tested by a group of senior students. The design included a mechanical base, pneumatic kicking mechanism, a DSP microcontroller-based control system, various sensor interfacing units, and the analysis of omnidirectional motions. The testing results showed that the system was able to move omnidirectionally with a speed of ∼2 m/s and able to kick a size 5 FIFA soccer ball for a distance of at least 5 meters. 1. Introduction