Micromouse is an event where small

robotic Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Within mechanical engineering, robotics is the design and construction of the physical structures of robots, while in computer s ...

mice compete to solve a 16×16

maze A maze is a path or collection of paths, typically from an entrance to a goal. The word is used to refer both to branching tour puzzles through which the solver must find a route, and to simpler non-branching ("unicursal") patterns that lead ...

. It began in the late 1970s. Events are held worldwide, and are most popular in the UK,

U.S. The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...

and becoming popular in subcontinent countries such as

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

. The maze is made up of a 16×16 grid of cells, each 180 square mm with walls 50 mm high. The mice are completely

autonomous robot An autonomous robot is a robot that acts without recourse to human control. Historic examples include space probes. Modern examples include self-driving Robotic vacuum cleaner, vacuums and Self-driving car, cars. Industrial robot, Industrial robot ...

s that must find their way from a predetermined starting position to the central area of the maze unaided. The mouse needs to keep track of where it is, discover walls as it explores, map out the maze and detect when it has reached the goal. Having reached the goal, the mouse will typically perform additional searches of the maze until it has found an optimal route from the start to the finish. Once the optimal route has been found, the mouse will traverse that route in the shortest achievable time. Competitions and conferences are run regularly.

Half-Size Micromouse

A version of Micromouse called the Half-Size Micromouse was introduced at the 30th All Japan Micromouse Competition in 2009. Instead of a 16×16 maze, the Half-Size competition uses up to a 32×32 maze. Cell and wall dimensions have been reduced by half, providing a new challenge.

Maze solving

Mice used in competitions employ the fundamental elements of

robot navigation Robot localization denotes the robot's ability to establish its own position and orientation within the frame of reference. Path planning is effectively an extension of localization, in that it requires the determination of the robot's current pos ...

, including mapping, planning, and localization. Additionally, they optimize their path through the maze using various

search algorithms In computer science, a search algorithm is an algorithm designed to solve a search problem. Search algorithms work to retrieve information stored within particular data structure, or calculated in the search space of a problem domain, with eith ...

. Common search algorithms use variations of the Bellman flood-fill method,

Dijkstra's algorithm Dijkstra's algorithm ( ) is an algorithm for finding the shortest paths between nodes in a weighted graph, which may represent, for example, a road network. It was conceived by computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra in 1956 and published three ...

A* search algorithm A* (pronounced "A-star") is a graph traversal and pathfinding algorithm that is used in many fields of computer science due to its completeness, optimality, and optimal efficiency. Given a weighted graph, a source node and a goal node, the algo ...

, among various

graph traversal In computer science, graph traversal (also known as graph search) refers to the process of visiting (checking and/or updating) each vertex in a graph. Such traversals are classified by the order in which the vertices are visited. Tree traversa ...

and

tree traversal In computer science, tree traversal (also known as tree search and walking the tree) is a form of graph traversal and refers to the process of visiting (e.g. retrieving, updating, or deleting) each node in a Tree (data structure), tree data stru ...

algorithms.

Performance

Mice can run at over three meters per second, depending on the maze design. Some of the best micromouse builders are Yusuke Kato, Ng Beng Kiat and Fumitaka Nakashima. The current world record is 3.921 seconds and is held by Ng Beng Kiat. Performance in recent years has improved considerably. As of 2015, winning mice are likely to run with forward acceleration and braking well over 1g. Cornering with

centripetal acceleration In mechanics, acceleration is the rate of change of the velocity of an object with respect to time. Acceleration is one of several components of kinematics, the study of motion. Accelerations are vector quantities (in that they have magn ...

as high as 2g is possible. Micromice are among the highest-performing autonomous robots. Most recently, robots are being equipped with a fan to create a partial vacuum under the mouse while it is running. The additional downforce available has made possible a huge improvement in performance. Compared to a non-fan mouse, the newer robots are likely to be able to achieve centripetal accelerations of 6g or more. Straight line accelerations can easily exceed 2.5g.

References

External links

* {{YouTube, ZMQbHMgK2rw, The Fastest Maze-Solving Competition On Earth Robotics competitions