Dr. Villareal, Tan, Alan, and I went to the APEC's Micromouse Competition in Fort Worth on Monday. The community was very nice and supportive.
Observations of the robots
- Almost all of their batteries were tiny, about the size of a quarter. The four Taiwan teams were using a lithium polymer 120mAh 2S (7.4V).
- The PCBs were very low to the ground and the wheels were about 23 mm diameter.
- Some of the robots used beeping tones and LEDs to know what the robot is sensing or deciding.
- Some of the robots used gyroscopes in order to determine direction and position.
Thoughts
- Can we detach the Stellaris from the launchpad like how the MSP430 detaches?
- Auto correcting seems to be very essential when roaming the maze.
- Many of the robot submissions were not teams of people, but rather individuals. Dr. Villareal wondered if we should we change the structure of Micromouse.
Some of the robots:
Shinichi Yamashita's robot (below) it uses a camera to take pictures of the maze walls in order to solve the maze.
Hi, there.
ReplyDeleteI think I talked to some of you at APEC.
I believe you should do this in team for first year, however, the size of team should be 2-3 people otherwise people either don't have thing to do or don't learn like what I've seen for lots of teams in the past. I started micromouse with my 2 other teammates when I firstly did it and all of us are very active. Then I did it the following year on myself by having lots of research over summer before the school year started.
Doing micromouse independently should be good as a returning micromouse player. Thinking problem independently is very important for people to understand some essential concepts.
To be honest, making a high performance micromouse is much easier than before since more designs are introduced through internet. It might be too hard for you guys to sky rocket to the level that I have, but I think there is something in the middle that you can try to approach, such as the program I established over Winter quarter, the project futura, which is on MicromouseUSA.com site. All the essential knowledge are included in order to make a high performance mouse by using high resolution encoder and gyro.
Make a such a micromouse like we do requires lots of research ahead of time along with the availability of all necessary facilities(such as CNC mill, or 3D printer, etc). If you are just planning to make a working mouse, there are lots of motor/encoder kit available on the market. Otherwise, you are more expect to make customized components instead to buy any ready-to-use stuff.
By the way. I've uploaded all video and they are all available at MicromouseUSA.com Feel free to link it.