Micromouse - a brief overview

The UK Micromouse championship is an international robotics competition, that has been held every year in the UK since 1980.

Similar events are also held in the USA, Japan, Singapore, Korea, India, and elsewhere. Autonomous robot 'mice' race against the clock to search the centre of a maze in the shortest time.

The maze consists of 256 squares (cells) arranged in a 16 x 16 format, on a 180mm grid. Each wall is 50mm high and 12mm thick, hence the minimum distance from wall to wall is 168mm.  Some examples of Mice and Mazes are shown on the gallery page.

The competition is open to all-comers, and  would-be mouse builders or interested spectators are very welcome. Beginners might like to enter the wall follower category first and then progress to the full micromouse maze-solving competition later.  There is an increasing amount of practical mouse building information being placed on the web. The 'Links' page points to some good sites.

The championship has been supported by a variety of organisations and academic institutions including Euromicro, the Institute of Electrical Engineers, the University of East London, the RAC, the University of Manchester, Loughborough University, the BBC, University of Exeter, University of Bristol, the Computer Science Department at Royal Holloway, the Technology Innovation Centre of Birmingham City University, and others.

Presentations to the IET 2007     Micromouse1  and   Micromouse2

IMPORTANT NOTICE:  The rules for SCHOOLS micromouse were modified in 2009

 to introduce the LINE FOLLOWER event, and to remove some of the Formula events.