Micromouse Online

On Saturday 29th November 2008, the Technology Innovation Centre will be holding its fourth annual winter event - ROBOtic.

Starting at 10:00, this event will be an opportunity to  watch or enter a robot in any of the following categories..

- Micromouse maze solvers
- Wall following
- Time trials
- Mini sumo
- Line following
- Freestyle

We also hope to have biped robot activity as well.

 All this is at the Technoology Innovation Centre , Millenium Point Birmingham, B4 7XG

Check with their web site to find uot more:

http://micromouse.tic.ac.uk/

I have made the presentation vidoes available from Minos 2008.

The original post is here:

http://www.micromouseonline.com/content/view/87/1/ 

These are unedited and of distinctly average quality. You will not be able to read the powerpoint presentations on the video so open up the associated Powerpoint and read along.

They are stored as Flash videos so clicking the little camera icon next to each presentation  will open up a new window with an embedded flash player. The start/stop controls are in the lower left of the video window.

Please note that, although they should start to play quite quickly, the actual video files are quite large at about 100MB each. 

As there were a large number of maze solvers this year, both the heats and the finals of the wall follower event had to take place in the annexe. This was a special room set up with an 11x11 maze and its own set of timing gear.

The wall follwer competition has two categories: contact and non-contact.  A wall-follower is expected to be able to navigate its way around a closed maze, following the left-hand wall until it reaches the centre. Contact wall followers will use the left hand wall for some kind of mechanical steering. A non-contact follower is expected to be able to perform the task without having to touch a wall. Should a non-contact follower actually touch a wall, that is not a penalty. However, if it became apparent that it was only capable of following the wall because of regular contact, a judgement would have to be made about its eligibility for the category.

In each category, entries are divided into junior, senior and schools. Seniors are 18 plus, schools are organised/sponsored by an educational establishment and under-18 independants form the junior entries.

Results follow the break... 

The maze solver event attracted eight entries in the senior category. In the morning, the heats were run. While we didn't need to eliminate a large field of entrants, the heats give the mouse handlers a chance at the big maze in the conditions of the final. We also use the heats to determine the running order for the finals. Competition in the top three places looked to be pretty close based on the heat results:

Results after the break...

The schools competition area was a scene of great activity during the micromouse competition. The entries from Singapore gave the events an extra air of excitement. Their specialist event was the F1 drag race where their stepper driven mice excelled, setting a new record. The Formula 1 race has now become very competitive with places being decided by hundredths of a second. In the formula 2 event, the competition was also very tight with the winner here also setting a new record.

Results after the break...

We should be able to post the results of the maze solver event very soon. In the meantime, here is a drawing of the final maze:

Those of you who have maze software for the PC might like to download a binary maze file here.

 I now have the heats maze as well. Although there are subtle differences in the actual mazes, intended to give the mice more to think about, it turns out both mazes have the same shortest-path solution.