1The description of team “KIKS”

The description of team “KIKS”
Keitaro YAMAUCHI 1, Takamichi YOSHIMOTO2, Satoshi HORII 3, Takeshi CHIKU4,Masato WATANABE5 ,Kazuaki ITOH 6 and Toko SUGIURA 7
Toyota National College of Technology
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
2-1 Eisei-cho,Toyota Aichi, 471-0067 Japan

1e70339@ toyota-ct.ac.jp

2e70342@ toyota-ct.ac.jp

3e70334@ toyota-ct.ac.jp

4e70324@ toyota-ct.ac.jp
56

masa@toyota-ct.ac.jp

kazu-it@toyota-ct.ac.jp
7

sugi@toyota-ct.ac.jp

1. IntroductionMain purpose of our participation to the RoboCup world competition is confirmationof the result of the PBL (Project Based Learning) experiment. Our team (KIKS) has
participated for four years since 2004. In 2007, it was resulted in one of the BEST8teams. We have educated for the creative minds of students using the robot contest heldin our department of electrical and electronic engineering. The creative minds havebeen evaluated quantitatively using the examination of the creativity or the personality
test continuously.

2. Education of the creative minds
We require to the students that to turn in the robot idea term paper about domestic
robot contests, RoboCup competition and PBL experiment in our college. In recentyears, the idea sketches drawn by students are getting worse at the point of non-reality
and childish imagination etc. Especially, expression’s ability of figure is declining
remarkably. We think that the reason as following. That is, previous students are calledin TV generation and/or portable game generation. We think that they have much inputof the 2-dimensional data from television etc. On the other hand, the input of actual
3-dimensional data (basic space form proved biologically and in engineering) is scarce.
The creative minds are not produced from nothing, but are born from thecombination and/or arrangement of past data, new point of view and motivation etc.
That is, an accumulation and/or a collection of the data arranged by many points ofview are very important to enhance the creative mind.
We have studied about the educational method to develop the creativity using therobot contest. In the case of our college, the feature is described as following. The2The description of team “KIKS”

making process of an idea is a kind of brainstorming. So, the students debate thepresentation of each idea by meaning of tournament. As the results, the idea isevaluated by many students and improved to the refined idea. Each function of various
robots can use as the image database to enhance the efficiency of idea.
Moreover, in this year, we try to execute a method to improve an ability of originality
and creativity by using the 3-D model. Figure 1 show the example of 3-D model. The
example of report drawn by student is shown in Fig.2. Now, we investigate andevaluate about that. So, we will leave the details of the result to another opportunity.

Fig.1 Example of 3-D modelFig.2 Example of report drawn by student

3. Robot
KIKS is constructed with four conventional robots which can move for all direction
and keeper robot with special wheels. The standard robot has powerful straight kickdevice (maximum ball speed of 9.5[m/s]) including the chip kick device. And it has
maximum robot speed of 2.5 [m/s] for all directional motion using by Re-max24 of
MAXON made.
A special wheel called mechanum wheel is used in the keeper robot. The mechanum
wheel is specialized to the motion of the right and left direction. Therefore, keeper
robot can move faster than other robots on that direction, and keep out the ball using thepowerful chip kick device.
We made the apparatus to measure the ball speed, and evaluated quantitatively theperformance of solenoid for chip kick device. The results are shown in Fig .3. The
mechanical reliability of robot was improved by strengthening an overall structure.
The communication mode of a wireless device was changed and the program of thatsystem was improved similarly. As the results, it was able to communicate the sixty
times per second to AI system.
The extended Hamming code is introduced for the error correction. Then, thecommunication error is able to detect within 2 bit error.
The motor driver’s circuit is manufactured ourselves. It includes a CPU for eachwheel. Therefore, the feedback control can be performed without any load in main
CPU.

The description of team “KIKS”

Ball velocity[m/s]

3

9.00
8.00
7.00
6.00
5.00
4.00
3.00
2.00
1.00
0.00

260
300
340
10152025
Stroke lenght [mm]30Fig.3 Evaluation of solenoid performance for chip kickIn our previous circuit for kick device, the voltage range of a capacitor wasmaintained between 170[V] and 200[V]. In that case, if the robot kicks the ballcontinuously, the big difference of ball speed is occurred in proportion as the remaining
voltage of a capacitor. Figure 4 shows the ball speed to the number of times for kicks. InFig.4, the symbol marks are meaning of the parameter of gate on time of MOSFET
between 1.4 [msec] and 3.5[msec], respectively. The solid line is corresponding to thepresent circuit, and broken line corresponds to the previous circuit. In the presentcircuit of Fig.4, the voltage range of a capacitor was kept between 190[V] and 200[V].
As the results, the fluctuation of pass speed is decreased remarkably.
8.00
7.00

Ball speed(m/s)

6.00
2.1msec
2.1msec
2.8msec
2.8msec
3.5msec
3.5msec

5.00
4.00
3.00
2.00
1.00
0.00
12

3 4 5 6 7 8The number of times9 10Fig.4 Dependence of the ball speed as a function of a number of times．

4The description of team “KIKS”

4. Image-Processing System
Now we use the two cameras as the global vision system, but their cameras do notsynchronize. Thus, the waiting or waste time was occurred at the time of combinationof the image information from two or more cameras. Therefore, this delay time had aserious influence on the whole of system. Moreover, this problem will be more serious
as increasing the number of cameras.
Then, we redesigned the system that could correspond to two or more cameras. It
could be synchronize all cameras using by UDP protocol.

5. AI System
Up to now, we, KIKS did not have used a simulator in AI system, but thedevelopment for AI system has been performed only for debugging. But, ascomplicating of strategy, it will be very important to use the simulator for development.
Then, in this year, we develop the new AI system incorporating simulator. As theresults, it was able to do the development of strategy easier compared with previoussystem. The image of simulator is shown in Fig.5.
In the simulator, each robot’s character can be input. Therefore, it is able to simulate
more realistic strategy.

Fig.5 The image of simulator for RoboCup

6. Control unit
In previous system, the delay time in control of a machine has occurred by thetime-lag related to the calculation time of AI server, image server and transmitter.
To solve this point, we carried out the linear prediction for the output data to a machine.
As the results, we could achieve more correct control for positioning.

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The description of team “KIKS”

7. Conclusion
We have done the improvement for all parts. As the results, we got the higher
performance compared with the last year. Most of devices are hand made by students.
Thus, the cost performance is very high in fact. Moreover, we are confident in sayingthat our education of the creativity makes to result the development of this system withstudent members of fewer than 20 years old.
As further creative education, we think that to enhance an ability to recognize 3-D
space image for students of electrical and electronic engineering. In the investigation ofthis year, we found that the ability to recognize 3-D space for students belong toelectrical and electronic engineering was very low. One of the reasons for mentioned
above that there is very little subject for drafting or CAD in a curriculum in thatdepartment.
We have a plan to investigate the degree of that characteristic in wide range in near
future.