Foosball-bot

Students at the University of Adelaide Australia have created a foosball force to be reckoned with –

Engineering students from The University of Adelaide have taken out the top award in their final-year mechatronics project competition, with an automated foosball table capable of kicking human opposition ‘off the park’. Comprising a motion sensor system, software written by the student team for decision-making, and a precision actuation system for manipulation of the controls, the automated game proved to be stiff competition.
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A 96-pinhole camera and LED sensor grid system was used to keep track of the ball’s position on the table. This information was read into the AI software via a digital I/O card, with decisions on movement commands fed into the SoftLogix platform. Since both the AI and SoftLogix software were housed on the same PC, communications were all handled using PC memory. “This meant that there was no need for additional PLC hardware,” said Sage’s Koulianos, “Here you’ve got SERCOS communications to the servo system coming straight out of the PC.”

No matches planned against Georgia Tech’s Autonomous Foosballer as of yet- Robotic Foosball