Ball detection for robotic soccer: a real-time RGB-D approach

The robotic football competition has encouraged the participants to develop new ways of solving different problems in order to succeed in the competition. This article shows a different approach to the ball detection and recognition by the robot using a Kinect System. It has enhanced the capabilities of the depth camera in detecting and recognizing the ball during the football match. This is important because it is possible to avoid the noise that the RGB cameras are subject to for example lighting issues.