Analysis and solution for the curling stone throwing of a novel six-legged curling robot in curling competition

Abstract

In curling competitions, the throwing strategy has a decisive influence on the outcome of the game. When robots are applied to the sport of curling, they first need to understand the various throwing strategies in curling competitions and then adjust their motion control parameters to achieve the corresponding strategic throws. However, current curling strategy research lacks mathematical analysis and descriptive methods for throwing strategies tailored to robots. Moreover, research on how robots can solve for corresponding throwing strategies is lacking. These limitations have restricted the application and development of curling robots in the sport. Here, the concepts of the curling stone’s hitting domain and hitting tree are introduced to analyze and describe the curling strategies for robots by constructing the curling hitting domain through a curling collision model and by building the hitting tree through operations such as combination, permutation, and pruning. Furthermore, based on the solution methods for hitting domains and hitting trees, a search solution method for the control parameters of robots is developed. The research findings are integrated into a curling robot auxiliary decision-making software. With the help of the auxiliary software, the curling robot achieves victory in competitions against humans. The research outcomes are of great importance for the application and development of curling robots and legged robots.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

curling robot / curling strategy / legged robot / control parameters

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