Gambit: An autonomous chess-playing robotic system

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2011-08-15

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

C. Matuszek et al., "Gambit: An autonomous chess-playing robotic system," 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Shanghai, 2011, pp. 4291-4297

Rights

This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by UMBC for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the author.

Abstract

This paper presents Gambit, a custom, mid-cost 6-DoF robot manipulator system that can play physical board games against human opponents in non-idealized environments. Historically, unconstrained robotic manipulation in board games has often proven to be more challenging than the underlying game reasoning, making it an ideal testbed for small-scale manipulation. The Gambit system includes a low-cost Kinect-style visual sensor, a custom manipulator, and state-of-the-art learning algorithms for automatic detection and recognition of the board and objects on it. As a use-case, we describe playing chess quickly and accurately with arbitrary, uninstrumented boards and pieces, demonstrating that Gambit's engineering and design represent a new state-of-the-art in fast, robust tabletop manipulation.