Real-time ball tracking in a semi-automated foosball table

  • Authors:

  • Rob Janssen;Jeroen de Best;René van de Molengraft

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Mechanical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands;Department of Mechanical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands;Department of Mechanical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands

  • Venue:
  • RoboCup 2009
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

In this article a method is proposed for ball tracking using 100 Hz computer vision in a semi-automated foosball table. In this application the behavior of the ball is highly dynamic with speeds up to 10 m/s and frequent bounces occur against the sides of the table and the puppets. Moreover, in the overhead camera view of the field the ball is often fully or partially occluded and there are other objects present that resemble the ball. The table is semi-automated to enable single user game play. This article shows that it is possible to perform fast and robust ball tracking by combining efficient image processing algorithms with a priori knowledge of the stationary environment and position information of the automated rods.