The description of team “KIKS”
Yukikazu TANIGUCHI 1 , Kyota MIWA 2 , Makoto KAINUMA 3 ,Masato WATANABE 4 and Touko SUGIURA 5Toyota National College of Technology
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
Eisei-cho, Toyota, Aichi, 471-8525 Japan1
tanippe23@yahoo.co.jp2kmpostjp@ yahoo.co.jp
3sonic@mc.ccnw.ne.jp
4masa@toyota-ct.ac.jp
5sugi@toyota-ct.ac.jp
1 Introduction
Our purpose of the participation to the RoboCup international competition is to keep themotivation of a development of the creativeness. We are aiming the effective education ofthe creativeness through the project-based learning (PBL) experiment. Our team was awarded the highest prize "robocon grand-prix" in NHK robot contest held in 2004. Additionally,
we are most numerous participation and numerous winners in NHK robot contest. Moreover,
KIKS is resulted the 3rd prize of RoboCup Japan Open held in 2004, and got a certification
for world competition. This is the result of the development of the educational creativenessby using the robot contest. Only students of 16-18 old years in our college participate to theNHK robot contest. After that, the student of 19-20 old years will take part in the RoboCup.
The education of the creativeness is mainly the method to devise and realize the idea. The
S-A creative test proposed by Guildford was used to evaluate the creativity quantitatively.
As the results of 100 students, the correlation between an academic ability and a creativity ofstudent is strong. But, in this test, we think that it is not measured creative ability, correctly.
We have known that there is the strong correlation between the nature and creativity of student. Thus, we aim for the development of the system to measure quantitatively the creativity with high accuracy. We also use the YG personality test which is evaluated the character.
To achieve this purpose, we need to prepare the educational program to develop the creativity. After that, we try to evaluate the creativity quantitatively. In this study, we manufacture aset of the experimental system to develop the creative ability.
2 The experiment set outline for creativity education
The experimental set is manufactured on a basis of the RoboCup small machine league forthe student of the Institute and/or the college of technology. The image-processing programand AI program are taking into account of the object thinking, that is, the plug-in system isadopted to improve easily the program. Thus, It is not so difficult to add the additional program. The robots which have three or six wheel are able to move all direction speedy. The
mother board, communication device, communication protocol and motor control circuit
used in the robots provide in advance as a basic design. The students design an original robot
by combining a basic part. An experimental set is given as follows.
1. Determination of the idea through the group meeting (the KJ Method)
2. Design of the robot drawing by 3-D CAD

How to give the various data to realize the idea, and the way to do breakthrough
3. Manufacturing the robot using by CNC Fraise Board, and coding program
The usage of various machine tools and the suggestion of the method to make program
4. The robot competition and the evaluation of performance of program
5. The qualitative measurement of creativity S-A creativity test and YG personality test

Fig.1: motor driver board

Fig.2: configuration of 6 drive-wheels

3 Manufacturing of robot with 6 drive-wheels
Up to now, we have manufactured the robots with 3 drive-wheels and 4 drive-wheels tomove for all direction. In order to run for all direction, the angle of the wheels attached on
the robot is 120 or 90 degree to the front-direction. So, when a robot goes straight to thefront-direction, the driving-power of both-side wheel decreases 70-86% of maximum power.
Moreover, a driving wheel always occur slip, that is, the system is not effective. The motor
used in robots is too long compared with our machine size. So, it is very difficult to design a
3 dimensional configuration. Thus, we tried to arrange the wheel's geometry which called"Thrustor Wheel" shown in Fig.2. As the results, we confirm that it has a good performanceas same as that of previous machine. These robots were designed by 3D-CAD, and manufactured by CNC fraise board.
4 Improvement of the camera system
In International Competitions held in Lisbon 2004, we were not able to recognize a ball.
The problem is the size of a ball in image. Because of our one camera system, the ball size
becomes very small with 4 pixels in image. Moreover, since the field size became large, theball moving to near the goal became into the shade of a machine. Consequently, we can notrecognize a ball in the vision system. In order to solve these problems, we have done the twocamera system.

Fig.3 two cameras' system
In this system, the data of coordinates is asynchronously sent to AI server from two cameras. The data does not include the information of all robots and a ball, but include only anobject reflected into the camera. The AI-server constructs the coordinates of all robots and aball from the data sent by each camera. In AI server, in order to update coordinates frompicture-server included with two cameras of 30fps. Thus, the operation cycle of AI server isequivalent to 60fps. In the present condition, since the execution time of our program in AI
server is below 1ms, it is no problem. In this system, it is easy to extend to two or morecameras.
5. Coordinates conversion of a picture server
Since the conversion lens is used, the curvature of the central part in a lens differs from theend part. So, it is necessary to compensate for that. First, the monochromatic chess board
written in a paper sized of 245mm*340mm is put on the competition field. Second, the lattice point of the monochromatic chess board displayed on CRT is clicked as shown in Fig4.
The coordinates of the lattice point in the actual field are already prepared. Next, the formula
to correspond to those two coordinates is approximated with the n-th function using a leastsquares method. Finally, we evaluate the coordinates on the basis of the parameter obtainedfrom n-th function. For example, the case of the approximation of the secondary function isshown as following,
X = Ax 2 +By2 +Cxy+Dx+Ey+F
Y = Gx 2 +Hy2 +Ixy+Jx+Ky+L
where x and y are the coordinates on an image, X and Y are the actual coordinates after converted, and A-L are shown as estimated parameter, respectively.

Fig4: input screen to compensate the data
The parameters of A-L are obtained from the data corresponding to the coordinates of eachlattice point given by a least-squares method. The Processing of a game uses the presumedfunction and performs coordinates conversion.

6. Conclusion
To participate to the RoboCup International competition, it is very important for us to keep
the motivation of students about the development of the creativity. In order to measure andevaluate the efficiency of education of the creativity quantitatively, it is difficult to analyze
sufficiently the degree of effect for a short period. That is to say, we need the situation
which is kept the high motivation for a long period. The college and/or institute in Japan
which can educate continuously the creativity for the students of 16-20 ages about a longperiod, are scarce. In order to investigate the effectiveness from the sufficient number ofstudents, we think that it is important to continue participating to the international competition.