Hardware and Software Aspects of the Design and Assembly of a New Humanoid Robot for RoboCup Soccer

This paper describes the design and development of a new humanoid robot named Newton, that is intended for applications in research and also to be used in the Robo Cup Kid Size League World Competition. Newton robot has been designed to work without any dedicated sub-controller implemented in low level hardware, often used to control the servomotors of the robot. Newton uses only a standard personal computer to do all processing and control necessary by the robot. To be able to deal with all the tasks involved in the robotic soccer domain, a new software architecture is proposed. This architecture is based on the hybrid paradigm, involving sensing, decision, planning, low level control, localization and communication. Preliminary tests show that the robot can walk properly while it performs tasks like finding the ball in an unknown position or positioning itself at the ball for kicking, exhibiting a very good performance.