Fuzzy controlled robot arm playing two-dimensional ping-pong game

A robot-arm system equipped with a CCD camera which is able to play two-dimensional ping-pong game has been built. The system is able to play in the form of both robot versus robot and robot versus human. In the robot control part, 25 fuzzy production rules are used. Ambiguous instructions in terms of membership functions are generated by the robot itself using imagery data from a CCD-camera. Each of these instructions consists of three fuzzy items. Two of them are input (ambiguous) information concerning the fuzzy point, that is where the ball was hit, and the fuzzy angle, that is from which direction the ball is coming, and the other is output information which shows the point that the ball will reach. This output information, which also indicates the point the robot should move to, is calculated based on a fuzzy inference method. The whole system is controlled by only one 16-bit personal computer, and works in real time. The advantage of the proposed method are the reduction of processing time and the availability of low level devices, which have not been realized by other methods.