I am working on a project for school. We are trying to discover an effective way to verify that a goal in soccer actually is a goal. We are trying to figure out what type of electronic devices to use, such as an infrared transmitter/receiver pair or RFID, to help solve this problem. If anyone could give ideas or advice that would be greatly appreciated.
Best options I can suggest would be something like machine vision that can track the ball movement at a decently high frame-rate. (You can find examples by looking for DIY sentry guns, and by looking at OpenCV documents)
A much simpler method would be using 1 or more line-of-sight sensors.
RFID has limited range, and the speed of the ball flying past may be too great to get a proper scan.
Now... forgive my ignorance here... but at what exact point is the ball considered to be in the goal?
When it 'touches' the line, or completely passes it? The goal tender may get in the way of optical sensors as well... so it would be best to use more than one.
Well. You could do this with 2 line-of sight sensors. One on the edge of the line, and another behind the line. As the ball passes, it breaks the first sensor, then the second sensor, then restores the first sensor as soon as it's passed the line. This gets tricky though because a players hand/foot/bum something could also get in the way of the sensor. If designed properly it won't triggir false goals, but could possibly miss goals.
By using a form of object tracking, you can identify the ball and watch it cross the line. *Note that I only suggest the object tracking based on the possibility of someone getting in the way of the sensor accidentally.
The sentry guns I mentioned was more for a demonstration of object tracking and identification, but any OpenCV information will help. (Open Computer Vision)
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