IEE Micromouse Competition Guide 1993
Alan Dibley
Alan Dibley was UK Micromouse Champion in
1982, '83, '84 and '85 and runner-up in two European
Championships. He has now retired from active competition -
probably.
1. AIMS
Micromouse is a competition for autonomous
vehicles designed to get to the centre of a micromouse maze in
the shortest possible time. Expert entries are achieving speeds
which would have been considered extraordinary in the early '80s
when the competition began. The micromouse competition
organisers want to broaden the range of entries to the event. To
this end the Micromouse competition has been made more
accessible to schools, amateur teams and individuals. Classes
have been specified to encourage entries from previously
under-represented areas. This article describes the methods used
by Micromouse builders and suggests ways in which devices can be
made by entrants with little previous experience of such
mechanisms.
2. CATEGORIES
There are categories for Schools, Junior and
Senior competitors: please refer to Rules for more information.
3. THE COMPETITION
Mice race against the clock to get from the
outside to the centre of a square micromouse maze. The
micromouse maze is built of 5cm high walls in an 18cm grid,
containing 256 cells, so a full-size micromouse maze is almost 3
metres square. A sample micromouse maze layout from a national
micromouse competition is shown in figure 1. Walls are 12mm
thick and painted white with red tops. The floor of the
micromouse maze is matt black, to simplify sensing by optical
methods.
The target is the central four squares. The
mice start from one corner (picture it as the south-west corner,
facing north). At entry to the micromouse maze, the micromouse
has no knowledge of the micromouse maze other than the overall
shape and size. It has 10 minutes to explore the micromouse maze
and determine the optimum route through the multiple paths, and
run it as fast as possible, as many times as the rules allow.
The fastest run counts, less allowances for
total elapsed time, and penalties for handling.
Figure 1: Example of a Micromouse maze
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