JPH09108403A - Shogi game recording device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a SHOGI (Japanese chess) game recording device with which a SHOGI game record can be automatically recorded and the changed contents in every move can be automatically outputted in voice for each action. SOLUTION: This SHOGI game recording device is provided with an image pickup means 1 for picking up the image of pieces on a SHOGI board, discriminating means 16 for discriminating whether the state of pieces is changed or not based on the picked-up image, specifying means 16 and 19 for specifying the kind and position of changed piece in every move when it is discriminated that any piece is changed, recording means for recording the changed state of pieces in a storage device 23 for each action based on the specified kind and position of piece, and voice output means 20 and 21 for outputting the changed state of pieces in every move in voice for each action based on the specified kind and position of piece.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a game record recorder for automatically recording the procedure of playing shogi in real time.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, as a method for recognizing a Go game, a method has been developed in which an image of a board is captured by a TV camera and is recognized by using a general image processing method such as binarization processing and pattern matching. (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 4-30707)
No. 7, JP-A-5-237213).

In the case of Go, all Go stones have the same shape, and there are only two kinds of Go stones, white and black, and the Go stone is newly struck or taken without moving on the board. Either of them. Therefore, it is possible to automatically grasp the state change of the go stone on the board by determining whether or not there is a white or black go stone at the intersection of the ruled lines on the board.

However, in the case of shogi, in order to automatically grasp the state change of each hand, it is necessary to recognize the characters drawn on the front and back of each piece, the shape of each piece, and the movement of each piece. The method of recognizing the state change of cannot be applied as it is, and a method of automatically grasping the state change of each piece has not been developed yet.

[0005]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the present invention to provide a game record recorder capable of automatically recording a game record and automatically outputting the change contents of a piece for each move. And

[0006]

A game record recording apparatus according to the present invention comprises an image pickup means for picking up an image of a piece on a shogi board, a judging means for judging whether or not the state of the piece has changed based on the picked-up image, and a piece for the piece. When it is determined that the state has changed, specifying means for specifying the changed type and position of the piece, and recording means for recording the changed state of the piece for each hand in the storage means based on the specified type and position of the piece , And voice output means for voice-outputting the change state of the piece for each hand based on the specified type and position of the piece.

As the determining means, for example, a means for determining whether or not the state of the piece has changed based on the presence or absence state of the piece for each cell is used.

As the specifying means, for example, a means for specifying the changed type and position of the piece based on the shogi rules and pattern matching is used.

In the game record recording apparatus according to the present invention, since the change state of the piece is recorded in the storage means for each move, the game record is automatically recorded. Further, since the change state of the piece is output by voice for each hand, the change state of the piece can be more clearly understood. In addition, by playing this game, the shogi player will take the next step after listening to this voice.
It is possible to prevent erroneous determination of a change in the state of the piece.

[0010]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows the appearance of a game record recording apparatus. The game record recorder is a CCD camera 1 that captures an image of a shogi board.
And a personal computer (hereinafter referred to as host) 1
9 and 9. The host 19 has an internal monitor 22 for displaying a game record image. Also, the host 19
An image processing board 30 for image-processing the image captured by the CCD camera 1 and a voice synthesizing board 20 for outputting the voice of the change contents of the frame are mounted on the. The external monitor 5 is connected to the image processing board 30. A speaker 21 is connected to the voice synthesis board 20.

FIG. 2 shows the electrical construction of the game record recording / reproducing apparatus, and particularly shows the detailed construction of the image processing board mounted on the host 19. Reference numeral 1 is a CCD camera 1 for capturing an image of a shogi board. Although only one CCD camera 1 is actually provided, for convenience of description, FIG. 2 shows the CCD 1a that captures the previous image and the CCD 1b that captures the current image separately. There is. In FIG. 2, the part in which the two blocks are overlapped and illustrated represents the one corresponding to the previous captured image and the one corresponding to the current captured image.

An analog image signal picked up by the CCD camera 1 is converted into a digital image signal by the A / D converter 2.

Reference numeral 6 is an image bus. In the image bus 6,
The frame memory 7, the first memory control unit 8, the video control unit 9, the image processing unit 11, and the image memory 13 are connected.

The frame memory 7 stores the digital image obtained by the A / D converter 2. The first memory control unit 8 and the video control unit 9 control writing of an image to the frame memory 7 in synchronization with the output of the CCD camera 1. The image stored in the frame memory 7 is displayed on the external monitor 5 via the D / A converter 4.

The image processing unit 11 is for performing image processing such as projection processing and template matching on the captured image (digital image stored in the frame memory 7).

The image memory 13 stores the calculation result of the image processing unit 11 and the template of the frame used for template matching. The image memory 13 is controlled by the second memory control unit 14.

Reference numeral 16 is a CPU mounted on the image processing board. Reference numeral 15 is a CPU bus. The CPU bus 15 has the above-mentioned first and second memory control units 8,
14, a frame memory 7, an image memory 13, an image processing unit 11, a processor EPROM 18, and a host interface 17 are connected.

The EPROM 18 stores a program for the CPU 16, that is, a control program for the image processing board. The host interface 17 is a host 19
Data is transferred between the CPU bus on the side and the CPU bus 15 of the image processing board. A speaker 21 is connected to the voice synthesis board 20 mounted on the host 19.

The host 19 is provided with a storage device 23 for storing its program, game record, and other necessary data. The host 19 issues a command to the image processing board 30 and the voice synthesis board 20, and also performs various processes related to a user interface and the like.

FIG. 3 shows the overall processing procedure of the game record recording apparatus. First, an initialization process is performed before the game starts (step S1). In the initialization processing, positioning of a shogi board, creation of a template, setting of illumination conditions, etc. are performed.

At the start of the game, the storage device 23 on the host 19 side stores information about the type and position of each piece according to the arrangement of the pieces at the start of the game, and the internal monitor 22 of the host 19 stores the information at the start of the game. A layout image of the pieces is displayed.

When the game starts, an image is captured (step S2). Then, the movement determination process based on the captured image is performed (step S3). In the movement determination process, whether or not the piece has moved is determined by determining the presence or absence of a piece for each grid of the shogi board. In addition,
Here, moving a piece includes not only the case where a piece existing on the shogi board has moved but also the case where a piece that has not existed on the shogi board is hit. Further, it is also determined whether or not an obstacle such as a hand or a human figure has entered the shogi board.

If it is determined in step S3 that the piece has not moved, or if an obstacle has entered the shogi board, the process returns to step 2 and a new image is captured. Then, the movement determination based on the newly captured image is started.

When it is determined in step S3 that the piece has moved, a piece type specifying process based on the rule is performed (step S4). In this process,
Based on the rules of Shogi, it is determined whether or not the pieces move, and the types of the moved pieces are narrowed down or specified based on the rules of Shogi.

When it is determined in step S4 that the movement of the frame is not proper (rule violation), the process returns to step S2 and a new image is captured.

In step S4, if the type of the moved piece is specified only by the rule of shogi,
After the type of the piece is confirmed by the pattern matching process using the template stored in the image memory 13 (step S6), the change content of the piece is recorded (step S7). For example, when a move peculiar to the piece is carried out, such as a jumping car, a square train, and Keima, the type of the moved piece is determined only by the rules of shogi. The record of the moved frame in this case is not the image itself but the code and position data representing the type assigned to the moved frame, and is stored in the storage device 23 on the host 19 side via the host interface 17. .

The image on the internal monitor 22 of the host 19 is switched to the image showing the changed arrangement of the frames (step S8). In addition, by converting the game information into text and sending it to the voice synthesis board 20, for example, the content of a finger hand such as “Cente (first move) Yong (four) Yong (four) Hu (step)” The change contents of the piece are output as voice through the speaker 21 (step S
9). Then, the process returns to step S2, a new image is taken in, and the processes after step S3 are performed.

If the movement is valid, but the type of the moved piece cannot be specified only by the rules of shogi, the process proceeds to step S5, and template matching processing using the template stored in the image memory 13 is performed. The type of the moved piece is specified by. Then, after the processes of steps S7 to S9 are performed, the process returns to step S2.

FIG. 4 shows a detailed procedure of the initialization process of step S1 of FIG. In the initialization process, first, the position of the shogi board is set and the camera is focused (step S11). That is, based on the image displayed on the monitor 5, the position of the camera 1 is adjusted so that the shogi board fits within the field of view of the camera 1. Also,
The position, inclination, size (magnification) of the shogi board in the monitor 5 are adjusted, and the focus is adjusted.

Next, the illumination conditions are set (step S12). That is, the brightness of the screen is adjusted by adjusting the aperture of the camera 1 based on the image displayed on the monitor 5.

Next, the position of the shogi board is taught (step S13). This operation is an operation for teaching the game record recording program at which position in the visual field of the camera 1 the shogi board is located. Specifically, the area of the shogi board on the screen is taught by an input device such as a mouse. This teaching may be performed automatically.

Next, the shogi board is checked (step S14). That is, the scratches, colors, etc. of the shogi board are checked, and parameters such as threshold values in the binarization process are set.

Next, the template data is loaded or the template is registered (step S15).
That is, when the template corresponding to the shogi piece used this time is stored in the storage device 23 on the host 19 side, the template is loaded from the storage device 23 into the image memory 13 of the image processing board. If the template corresponding to the shogi piece used this time is not stored in the storage device 23 on the host 19 side, a new template is created by capturing an image of the piece with the CCD camera 1, and the template is created in the image memory 13. Is stored.

When creating a new template,
First, the camera 1 is used to capture an image without inclination of each frame, and original data composed of 14 types of images as shown in FIG. 5 is created. Next, the original data is rotated 180 ° to create data (partner of the other party), and combined with the original data to form a template with an angle of 0 ° as shown in FIG.

Further, by affine-transforming the template having the angle of 0 °, the templates having predetermined angle intervals (for example, 5 °) are created in the range of -30 ° to + 30 °. In this way, a plurality of templates with predetermined angle intervals are obtained.

When the processing of steps S11 to S15 is completed, various parameters used for the image processing are transferred to the image processing board side (step S16), and the initialization processing is completed.

FIG. 7 shows the detailed procedure of the movement determination process of FIG. First, pre-determination processing is performed (step S21). In this preprocessing, as shown in FIG. 8, the captured image (image) is first spatially filtered using a high-pass filter. Then, the processed image is binarized using a threshold value to obtain a binarized image.

Next, an obstacle determination process is performed based on the binarized image obtained in step S21 (step S22).

In this obstacle determination process, as shown in FIG. 9, elongated windows are set along each of the outermost four sides of the grid of the shogi board, and the image in each window is cut out. Then, the production of the image in each window is required.

For example, in the binarized image, if the black pixel is 0 and the white pixel is 1, and if the continuous length of 0 pixels exceeds a predetermined threshold value, it is determined that there is an obstacle. When it is determined that there is an obstacle, the movement determination of the piece is hindered, so a new image is captured.

When it is determined that there are no obstacles, the process proceeds to step S23, and it is determined whether or not there is a piece. That is, whether or not there is a piece is required for each cell. For example, it is determined that there is a piece if the total area of black pixels in the grid is equal to or larger than the threshold value, and it is determined that there is no piece if the total area of black pixels in the grid area is smaller than the threshold value.

Next, it is determined whether or not the piece has moved, based on the piece presence / absence state obtained this time and the piece presence / absence state obtained last time (step S24). The rules shown in Table 1 below are used to determine the movement of the pieces.

[0044]

[Table 1]

In other words, it is determined that the piece has moved when the state in which there is a piece is changed to the state in which there is no piece in a certain mesh, and when the state is changed from the state where there is no piece to the state where there is a piece.

When it is determined that there is no movement of the frame, the hand has not advanced, so a new image is captured. If it is determined that the frame has moved, the image data string of the frame is transferred from the image processing board side to the host 19 via the CPU bus 15. And step S in FIG.
Processing 4 is performed.

FIG. 10 shows each process of steps S4 to S7 of FIG. In FIG. 10, steps shown on the left side of the chain line show processing performed on the image processing board side, and steps shown on the right side of the chain line show processing performed on the host 19 side.

In step S4, an attempt is made to specify the type of the moved piece based on the shogi rule, and the position of the moved piece is specified. Shogi rules are for host 1
It is stored in the storage device 23 on the ninth side. The processing of step S4 is performed on the host 19 side.

By the way, in the case of shogi, the movement patterns of the pieces are as shown in FIG. 11, FIG. 12 and FIG.
There are three patterns:

Pattern 1: A case where only one frame is simply moved (see FIG. 11). Pattern 2: When moving one's piece and taking the opponent's piece (Fig. 1
2). Pattern 3: When hitting one's own piece on an empty square (see FIG. 13).

In the case of pattern 1, as shown in FIG. 11, the area in which the pieces change (change area) is the "area in which there is a change from no piece to the existence of a piece" and the area in which there is a change from the existence of a piece to no piece. There are two places. In FIG. 11, the changed piece is normally shown in the area where there is no piece and there is a piece, and the piece before change is shown in a shaded area in the area where there is no piece and there is no piece. .

In the case of such pattern 1, the type of the moved piece is specified or narrowed down based on the number of pieces moved, the moving direction, and the like. For example, FIG.
As shown in, when the piece moves forward by one box,
The types of pieces that have moved are narrowed down to walks, spur wheels, sash wheels, silver generals, gold generals, and king generals.

When a piece moves diagonally by two or more boxes, the moved piece is specified as a square row. Further, when the piece moves laterally by two or more boxes, the moved piece is specified as a flying piece. Further, if the moving position of the piece is a position which is moved forward by 2 and moved laterally by 1 with respect to the original position, the moved piece is identified as Keima.

However, if the position after the movement is in the successful frame area, it may be necessary to recognize whether or not the successful game has become successful.

In the case of pattern 2, as shown in FIG. 12, the areas where the pieces change (change areas) are the "area where there is a piece and the area where there is no piece" and the area where there is a change from having a piece to having a piece. There are two places. Even in the case of the pattern 2, the type of the moved pieces is specified or narrowed down based on the number of pieces moved, the moving direction, and the like.

Whether the movement pattern of the piece corresponds to pattern 2 and the position of the movement destination of the piece is determined, for example, as follows. There is an "area that changes from having a piece to no piece", and an "area that changes from having no piece to having a piece"
When there is not, it is determined that the movement pattern of the piece corresponds to pattern 2. According to the rules of shogi, the area in which a piece that has changed from having a piece to having no piece can take an opponent piece is narrowed down. Then, for each narrowed area, it is determined by pattern matching whether or not there is a piece that has changed from having a piece to having no piece in that area. It is determined that the area is the destination area of the piece.

In the case of pattern 3, as shown in FIG. 13, the area in which the pieces change (change area) is one of the "areas in which there are no pieces and there is a piece". In the case corresponding to the pattern 3, when the number of pieces held is one, the hit piece can be specified. When there are two or more kinds of pieces, the hit pieces are narrowed down to the pieces.

When the moved piece and the held piece are specified based only on the shogi rules, the type of the piece is confirmed by pattern matching (step S
6) The type and position of the confirmed pieces are stored in the game (step S7).

When the moved piece and the held piece are not specified based only on the shogi rule, the image data string of the piece is transferred from the host 19 side to the image memory 13 on the image processing board side. Then, on the image processing board side, the position of the moved piece is specified, and the type of the moved piece is specified by pattern matching (step S5). Then, the type and position of the identified piece are stored in the game record (step S7).

[0060]

According to the present invention, it is possible to automatically record a game record and automatically output the change contents of the piece for each move.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram showing the appearance of a game record recording device.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing an electrical configuration of the game record recording device.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing an overall processing procedure of the game record recording apparatus.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing a detailed procedure of initialization processing of FIG.

FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram showing original data when creating a template.

FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram showing a template with an angle of 0 °.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart showing a detailed procedure of movement determination processing of FIG.

FIG. 8 is an explanatory diagram for explaining pre-determination processing of FIG. 7.

FIG. 9 is an explanatory diagram illustrating an obstacle determination process.

10 is a flowchart showing the processing of steps 3 to 6 in FIG.

FIG. 11 is a schematic diagram showing a movement pattern of a piece.

FIG. 12 is a schematic diagram showing a movement pattern of a piece.

FIG. 13 is a schematic diagram showing a movement pattern of a piece.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 CCD Camera 11 Image Processing Unit 13 Image Memory 16 CPU 19 Host 20 Voice Synthesis Board 21 Speaker 23 Storage Device

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. An image pickup means for picking up an image of a piece on a shogi board, a judging means for judging whether or not the state of the piece has changed based on the picked-up image, and a change for judging that the state of the piece has changed. Specifying means for specifying the type and position of the specified piece, recording means for recording the change content of the piece for each move in the storage means based on the specified type and position of the piece, and based on the specified type and position of the piece And a voice output device for outputting a voice output of the change contents of the piece for each hand. 2. The game record recording apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the determination means determines whether or not the state of the piece has changed, based on the presence or absence state of the piece for each grid. 3. The game record recording apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the specifying means specifies the changed type and position of the piece based on a shogi rule and pattern matching.