AutoRef implementation

The implementation for the AutoRef autonomous referee for RoboCup Middle Size League (MSL) robot soccer is the proposed design of the AutoRef system.

In 2021 contributions by MSD 2020 focused on detecting ball-to-player distance violations.

Introduction

Objective statement

The main objective of the implementation part of the project was to detect violations of the rules related to the distance between the ball and players during the following game states:

• Free kick
• Kick-off
• Corner kick
• Goal kick
• Throw-in
• Dropped-ball
• Penalty kick

These rules are described in Laws number 8, 10, 13, 14, and 15 of the MSL Rulebook.

Motivation

This objective was chosen due to several reasons:

- Past projects analysis has shown that this functionality has never been designed before

- Stakeholder interviews (the MSL referees) have led to the conclusion that this kind of rules are hard to control for a human being

- Proof of concept for the developed functional specification was desirable

- Learning goals of the team members correspond to the technical solutions necessary for the functionality development

Scope of work

The following topics were included in the implementation scope:

• Requirements formulation

• Architectural decomposition development

• Individual code blocks development

• Individual code integration

• Software testing on images and videos

These topics are explained in detail in the following sections.

Process model

Introduction

The development activities of the design team need support from process models. In this project, the V-model is chosen to guide the development procedure from requirement engineering to system validation. Due to the particularity of the project itself, some details of the model have been changed. At the same time, the agile approach was used during system development and combined with the traditional V-model, which makes the project progress more flexible and efficient.