Engineering students seek funding for robot goal keeper

Sharjah A group of engineering students at Khalifa University (KU), Sharjah, are seeking investors to help fund the upscale of their prototype of a robotic goal-keeper, built for a recent engineering competition.

The four electronic and computer engineering students at KU took the top prize of Dh2,000 at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) student competition held in the UAE recently.

“We want to enhance and develop the robot goal keeper and commercialise it but it’s hard for students in this region to gain access to investors,” says Mohammad Lua’i Hammadi, who studies electronic engineering at KU. “Our idea is to upscale our current robot to be able to train children at practice sessions, rather than using a human goal keeper.”

It cost the team — Nasser Al Rayhi, Ala’a Abdul Nasser, Dima Kilani, Mohammad Sami Zitouni and Hammadi — a total of Dh1,500 to build the robot that was entered into the IEEE competition.

The prototype structure was built using basic materials like wooden planks and aluminium rods found in the market place.

How it works

“Robo-goal-keeper”, as it is affectionately named, is a system comprised of three sub-systems — visual, intelligence control and mechanical. The visual sub-system is made up of a camera and image-capturing and detection software.

When the camera captures an image, the software starts to look for the ball within its range. Upon detecting that the ball has been lobbed towards the goal, the visual system estimates the direction of the ball and the position at which it will strike the goal. This information gets passed to the intelligent control system made up of a microcontroller, which is basically a dedicated computing device. The microcontroller then issues the appropriate commands to the motor to move across the goal based on the predicted position of the incoming ball.

The mechanical system — which consists of a vertical arm and a set of pulleys — is then moved to the appropriate position by the motor to block the shot.

Although it may sound all rather complicated, “Robo-goal-keeper” was one of the simpler designs entered into the competition, which is why their team beat the other 11 teams, says Hammadi.

“We won the competition because we managed to defend 90 per cent of the shots to our goal,” he says. “There were other teams with more complicated designs but ours was simple and mobile, and most importantly, nailed the objective.”