Soon after listening to the presentation by Martyn Pittuck at Minos12 about Shapeways printed parts, I designed and ordered the motor mounts for my micromouse, Decimus 4. The design part was a bit harder than I expected because of a poor decision taken previously about the PCB outline but ordering the parts was easy. The hardest part was waiting for them to arrive. Today, they did. see how they turned out

Arguably the most important turn that a micromouse can perform is the search turn. That is, a simple 90 degree turn performed while the mouse is still searching the maze. While searching, the mouse generally has no idea what is waiting around the next corner. A decision has to be made on the fly as to what to do next. That means that the turn has to be much tighter than it will be during a speed run. Also, there is unlikely to be much information to allow the mouse to correct its position. This evening I finished implementing a new turn for Decimus 2B. see how it runs

Preparation of Decimus2B for the UK micromouse contest in four weeks or so proceeds apace. The mouse is faster than it has ever been, it is more accurate than it has ever been and it turns better than it ever has before. Does it work well? Of course not. Find out why

When a micromouse corners faster, sooner or later, it will run out of grip. That doesn’t mean it can not perform a useful turn but it will drift instead of neatly following a tangential path around the turn. To find out where the limits might be for Decimus 2B, it was set to do a constant radius turn at increasing speed. See what happens