Specify golf balls to be matte #soccer-rules-2023

RoboCupJunior Soccer
1

Hi everybody,

we’re planning to specify the golf balls to be used in tournaments to be matte to make them easier to recognize by color, especially under bright spotlights where shiny balls get lots of little white spots. What do you think?

  • This is a good idea
  • This is not a good idea (please post reasons below)
  • Do something else to fix this problem (please post solution below)

0 voters

Cheers
David

2

Hi David, hi forum,
the idea of using a matte ball is not bad, but as long as we do not have a specific ball to buy all over the world there will always be differences. My impression was that the surface of the ball has not only effect on the vision system but even more on the dribbling. The only matte ball I have seen was so “sticky” that dribblers kept lifting themselves up while dribbling.
So the “standard” golf-ball with its hard and plain surface was much easier to handle.
However, if the “robocup”- golf-ball that will be used by all tournaments is always the same and easy to buy all over the planet, teams can adopt to this and we can use a matte ball as well.

On the other hand, all “standard” cameras like pixy (1, 2, 2.1) and OpenMV Cams look for signatures and draw a box around all found blobs, and so these boxes include the “white spots” without any problems.

So being less specific with the ball will probably lead to less discussions on the games.

Roland

1 Like
3

It would probably be difficult to find out which golf balls are readily available in all 39 RoboCup regions - which is not to say we shouldn’t try but I suspect it will not make the 2023 timeline if it happens.

Has this been everyone’s experience? I think I vaguely remember teams telling us something to the effect of the white spots making life difficult. If anyone had difficulty with the bright spots please let us know.

This is true - the whole approach rests on the question if the camera problems are even real so please everybody let us know what your experiences were.

David

4

Hi everybody,

we ended up going for a less specific phrasing, (rules recommend matte and hard surface now but do tell teams to be prepared to play with what tournament organizers can provide).
You can find a link to a PDF of the current state of the draft in this thread
What do you think?

Best Regards
David

1 Like
5

The draft version went into the final rules which are out now. Thank you for bringing the issue to our attention.

Best Regards
David