Control system design for a 5-DOF table tennis robot

A visual control system is designed for a table tennis robot with five degrees of Freedom (DOFs). It consists of four parts such as ball sensing, trajectory predicting, motion planning, and motion control. A highvelocity stereo vision system with parallel architecture is developed to sense the motions of table tennis ball. The striking parameters including position, velocity, and time are predicted according to the predicted trajectory of the ball based on several measured positions. The motion computer receives the predicted striking parameters and performs motion planning for the robot. A motion control card embedded in the motion computer receives the planning results and controls the motions of the robot via the servo drivers for X and Y axes. A microprocessor is designed to produce pulses to control the motions of the rest three axes via the drivers. Experiments are well conducted to verify the effectiveness of the developed robot and control system.