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Chess, which has been recognized as a sport by the International Olympic Committee in 1999, is a rare exception. Nevertheless, to compete in official tournaments, people suffering from a high level of motor impairment must rely on the assistance of a person to move their pieces on the chessboard, under their indications. This can result in a reduction of the feeling of independence and self-esteem. In this work, a service robot is employed as an assistant for competitive chess players, moving pieces on a standard chessboard for competitions, and adhering to the rules of the international chess federation (e.g. not relying on a custom sensorized chess-set). The robot is controlled through an intuitive graphical user interface. The user interface can be navigated with easy-to-use devices, such as a mouse, a touchpad, or a commodity joystick for motion-impaired people (Ottobock calibratable Mini joystick). An effective framework for the opponent\u2019s move identification from RGB-D images is proposed and used to keep track of the live game situation. The application is implemented in ROS on a PAL Robotics TIAGo robot, a service robot with a 7 degrees-of-freedom arm, an extensible torso, and a re-orientable RGB-D camera. The robustness of the application is tested by reproducing six famous chess games several times on a standard wooden competition chessboard, making TIAGo play on behalf of the player with white or black pieces, alternatively. The application is properly working without the need of operator intervention in the <jats:inline-formula><jats:alternatives><jats:tex-math>$$91.6\\%$$<\/jats:tex-math><mml:math xmlns:mml=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1998\/Math\/MathML\">\n                  <mml:mrow>\n                    <mml:mn>91.6<\/mml:mn>\n                    <mml:mo>%<\/mml:mo>\n                  <\/mml:mrow>\n                <\/mml:math><\/jats:alternatives><\/jats:inline-formula> of the performed moves. The proposed approach successfully opens the door to independent competitive chess playing for motor disabled people in official tournaments.\n<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1007\/s12369-023-01069-y","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,11,1]],"date-time":"2023-11-01T17:02:45Z","timestamp":1698858165000},"page":"173-183","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":5,"title":["A Robotic Assistant for Disabled Chess Players in Competitive Games"],"prefix":"10.1007","volume":"16","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5841-3287","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Luca","family":"Pozzi","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Silvia","family":"Guerini","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Stefano","family":"Arrigoni","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Alessandra","family":"Pedrocchi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Marta","family":"Gandolla","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,11,1]]},"reference":[{"key":"1069_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1136\/bmjopen-2017-018815","author":"J Abdi","year":"2018","unstructured":"Abdi J, Al-Hindawi A, Ng T et al (2018) Scoping review on the use of socially assistive robot technology in elderly care. 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The other authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.","order":2,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Conflict of interest"}},{"value":"Not applicable as the paper does not contain any individual person\u2019s data.","order":3,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Consent for Publication"}}]}}