Positioning of Active Wheels for Optimal Ball Handling - A Guide for Designing a New Ball Handle Mechanism for Middle-Size-League at RoboCup.

The RoboCup is an international competition in robot science. In the Middle Size League (MSL), which is one of the robotic soccer leagues, dribbling a ball is an essential capability. This task needs both hardware and software consideration. The position of the active dribbling wheels determines the movement possibilities of the dribbling robot and software control can only limitedly make up for poor hardware design decisions. We present a guide that leads through the decision-making process for positioning the wheels of the ball handle mechanism. We show a variety of considerations that need to be taken into account when designing a ball handle mechanism. We weight the requirements and conclude an optimal positioning for the ball handle mechanism of the Carpe Noctem Cassel team. We also present the kinematic solution of the ball actuation for the essential movement directions.