Object Detection Methods for a Robot Soccer

Soccer tournaments between robot teams are being held around the world to encourage robotic research. An accurate detection and tracking of a ball position, an identification of robots and objects during a game are crucial for robot teams. In this paper, object detection methods for identifying robots and a ball during a robot soccer game are presented. Standard OpenCV library functions were adjusted for a ball and robots' detection. Simulation studies were carried out in Gazebo environment to compare a performance of various methods discussed in this paper.