A System Design Concept Based on Omni-Directional Mobility, Safety and Modularity for an Autonomous Mobile Soccer Robot

In this paper, we describe the concept, design and implementation of a series of autonomous mobile soccer robots, named Musashi robots, which are designed referring ISO safety standards and have mechatronics modular architecture. The robots are designed to participate in the RoboCup Middle Size League. Using a modular design philosophy, we show that the selection of a proper moving mechanism, a suitable vision system and a mechatronics modular architecture design can lead to the realization of a reliable, simple, and low cost robot when compared with most car-like robots that include many kinds of sensors and have a complex design structure.