Arbitrary Ball Recognition Based on Omni-Directional Vision for Soccer Robots

Recognizing the arbitrary standard FIFA ball is a significant ability for soccer robots to play competition without the constraint of current color-coded environment. This paper describes a novel method to recognize arbitrary FIFA ball based on omni-directional vision system. Firstly the omni-directional vision system and its calibration for distance map are introduced, and the conclusion that the ball on the field can be imaged to be ellipse approximately is derived by analyzing the imaging character. Then the arbitrary FIFA ball is detected by using image processing algorithm to search the ellipse imaged by the ball according to the derivation. In the actual application, a simple but effective ball tracking algorithm is also used to reduce the running time needed after the ball has been recognized globally. The experiment results show that the novel method can recognize the arbitrary FIFA ball effectively and in real-time.