Development of Stone Throwing Robot and High Precision Driving Control for Curling

In this paper, a novel mobile robot developed to perform Curling sports is introduced. The developed robot is a Stone Throwing Robot (STR) for Curling that can travel on the ice with wheels and throw a stone as well as make curls of the stone. The STR is developed as a robot component of an Artificial Intelligence(AI) system that can autonomously play the curling sport. The proposed STR can throw a stone at any desired speed and in any desired direction, which are determined by the AI system. To achieve this precise driving of the STR and throwing of the stone, two dimensional drive control is developed for the STR, which consists of 1) anti-slip control for high traction, 2) precise velocity control and 3) high accuracy heading angle control. In addition to the conventional PID controller, model-based feedforward control, Model Following Control (MFC) for the anti-slip control of the wheel on the ice and Yaw Moment Observer (YMO) for the robust heading angle control are applied as key technologies for the STR driving. The design configurations of the STR to achieve the detection of its own location and throwing/curling of the stone is proposed in this paper as well as the detail of the precise driving control.