During 2010, Mario Ferrari and I joined the efforts to make a fully autonomous soccer game system using MINDSTORMS NXT. It was a great honor for me to work together with Mario, one of the old-school LEGO MINDSTORMS RCX experts, my inspirer and mentor. 

The player robots are autonomous, but also the field is a robot, that can count scores on its scoreboard and throw the ball back in. Players and field communicate bidirectionally using Bluetooth.

Robots sense the HiTechnic IR Ball using the HiTechnic IRseeker V2. They localize on the field using the CODATEX RFID sensor, that reads the hundreds of RFID transponders placed on the game field.

MAKING OF "The Serious NXT Soccer Game"

March-Sept 2010

The soccer robot is the result of many hours spent making prototypes, different ball catching mechanisms, and feelers.

We used a MINDSTORMS NXT set 2.0 per robot, adding some third party sensors, and some old RCX touch sensors.

Mario Ferrari built the whole field out of wood and aluminum, following the ROBOCUP JR dimensional directions. He improved the field overall look in many ways.

Here's Mario attaching the tags on the field. Mario wrote a special simulation software to study which could be the best distribution of the 200 tags on the field.

I took care of the whole NXC programming of the robots and the field. Most of the low level software was made "at the desk", while the final programming of players behavior and strategies had to be done "on the field", in Mario's workshop.

Here's a very satisfied Mario looking at the completed field. The ball elevator was designed by him, while we made the scoreboard together.

All material is

COPYRIGHT 2010 by

Daniele Benedettelli & Mario Ferrari

Instructions and programming not available.