Introduction and Project Summary

A key aspect of competitive chess is notation, the act of recording every move made during the game to ensure the legitimacy of the current position and to keep records of previous games. The standard practice of players handwriting their own notation is prone to errors such as poor handwriting, missed moves, and fraud. We aim to build a chess board that detects player’s moves and records them as notation. It will also check move legality in real time and store the notation on a server to allow users to check past games. Critically, we will detect the moves without the use of computer vision, ensuring that users need not install and play around a camera above the chess board. We hope to create an experience nearly indistinguishable from playing normal chess, only without the cumbersome task of manual notation.