An UpdatedMicromouse Competition
Ning Chen
Department of Computer Science
Department of Electrical Engineering
California State University, Fullerton
Fullerton, CA 92634
Abstract
The original micromouse competition in which
miniature robots compete for the title of best speed and
intelligence was first started around 1978. Over the
years it became one of the few student competitions
among engineering schools around the world.
Nevertheless, the participation rate had never reached a
significant level. Furthermore, since the competition's
debut, no major changes on the game rules which were
designed around the technology almost 20 years ago had
been made. In this paper an updated micromouse
competition is proposed. The updated game is designed
to achieve the following goals: 1. generating high
participation rate from engineering students; 2.
promoting multidisciplinary undergraduate engineering
activities; 3. encouraging the use of current
technologies; 4. lowering the overall costs on managing
the competition by engineering schools and on building
the micromouse by students. This paper presents an
updated micromouse game plan and competition rules. A
micromouse design example developed at California
State University, Fullerton (CSUF) for the new game is
also included.
weakness is discussed. An updated
competition is proposed.
Current competition
The current micromouse competition is
conducted around the maze specified in Figure 1 shown
below:
2.88 m
Goal Squares
2.88 m
Lattice
Starting Square
1.2 cm
Top View
Post
Wall
16.8cm
Introduction
1.2 cm
1.2 cm
Micro mouse competition is one of the major
student competitions that excite students majoring in EE,
CS and CE. Nevertheless this competition is not popular
enough to become a significant event among inter-school
activities. For example, IEEE region six holds
micromouse competition annually. Among six to seven
engineering schools attended the meeting regularly, there
are only typical one or two schools managed to produce
fully functional mice. The major reason of this low
successful rate is not because the lack of interest but
because the technical and non-technical difficulties
associated with the micromouse project. In this paper an
analysis of the current competition is presented. Its
micromouse
16.8 cm
Side View
1.2 cm
Top (red)
Side (white)
5 cm
Floor (black)
Figure 1. Maze Specification
A typical micromouse built to maneuver the maze is
shown in Figure 2.
Top View
Left Sensors
Front Sensors
Right
Sensors
The computer on-board typically is a single
board computer built from scratch using wire wrap
prototyping technique. The CPU used ranges from
68HC11 to 80C188EB. To increase reliability and to
reduce power consumption mouse builders always try to
reduce the number of components used. As a result the
on-board computer is always barely enough to handle the
computation. All software is written from scratch and
stored in EPROM. There is no floppy or hard drive. Onboard computer does not provide any programming
environment. Debugging of the software becomes an
extremely time consuming process [1].
Sensor system is made of eight reflective
infrared sensors. Those are discrete sensors. Any
environment variation may hinder the sensor system's
accuracy.
Wheel
Drawbacks of the current competition
Casters
S ide V iew
C o m p u ter
bo a rd
The current competition is based on the
following principles:
S en sor a n d
b atte ry b oard s
1. A precise environment.
2. Build everything by yourself.
3. Build as simple as possible.
Sensors
W heel
C aster
S tep p ing m otor
Figure 2. A micromouse example
The first difficulty is the maze itself. The
specification requires a huge base floor of almost 3m x
3m. It is expensive and difficult to build such a maze. At
CSUF we tried to build one. After spending $1700, it still
did not fully comply the specification. To utilize the
maze is another problem. A special room needs to be set
aside permanently for the maze, since setting up the
maze is very time consuming. Most of the testing of the
mouse requires the maze. It is virtually impossible for
students to test their mice at home for example.
The construction of the mouse also presents
difficulty. The main reason is that the maze square is
very small. No off-the-shelf toy car with steering
mechanism fits in the square. As a result, students need
to build a precision mechanism that is beyond the ability
of typical EE, CS and CE students. The cost of such a
precision mechanism is also very high.
Those principles may not be valid any more. As
we already know, in a real world a precise environment
seldom exists. The concept of build-every-thing-yourself
violates the rule of economics and results in an extremely
expensive system. The idea of building a system as
simple as possible may not fit in the education arena in
which the emphasis is to extend the boundary of
knowledge.
Proposed new competition
The proposed new competition is based the
following principles:
1. Real world environment.
2. Build your work on top of other's.
3. Use of the latest technologies.
4. Use as much as computation power available.
The new maze can be built in any place and is
made of only two components. One is the center divided
line. The other is the traffic cone as shown in Figure 3.
The proposed competition has the following
advantages:
1. Use of vision.
2. Very low cost maze construction.
3. Low cost on vehicle construction.
4. Use of high performance computation power.
5. Use of AI algorithms
6. Audience involvement (see what the robot sees)
Implementation
Figure 3. A portion of the maze
The vehicle is an off-the-shelf radio controlled
toy car (RC car). A CCD camera is mounted on the
vehicle. The image of the road condition is radioed to a
PC via a video transmitter. The PC is equipped with a
video receiver and a frame grabber. The video image of
the road condition is processed by the PC [2] and the
control command is sent back to the vehicle by a separate
radio link. The vehicle is allowed to equip with local
computer to handle the control command from the
remote PC and some local sensors.
To keep audience of the competition informed, a
separate TV screen shows the video image transferred
and possibly the control command sent back to the
vehicle. The winner of the competition can be
determined, for example, by solving the maze with the
shortest time. A possible competition arrangement is
shown in Figure 4.
A preliminary work has been conducted at
CSUF. An off-the-shelf radio controlled car is used as the
base vehicle. A micro miniature black and white CCD
module with 537 x 505 pixels is mounted on the left side
of the vehicle. The CCD module produces 1v p-p
composite video output. The video output then is fed to a
video transmitter with carrier frequency of 900MHz. A
separate receiver recovers the video signal and sends it to
a PC based video frame grabber that captures either
B&W or color images. Image processing software then
analizes the image in real-time. The control command is
sent back to the vehicle by a separate radio link.
Conclusion
In this paper a modified micromouse project is proposed.
The current micromouse competition never achieves
reasonable participation rate among engineering schools.
The major reasons are: 1. unreasonable maze
specification; 2. high engineering cost; 3. inadequate
computation environment. The proposed updated
micromouse competition promotes the following: 1. real
world maze; 4. reasonable engineering cost by using offthe-shelf components; 5. adequate computation
environment by using high end PC and PC programming
environment; 6. promote the use of vision.
References
1. Ning Chen, Hwang Chung and Young K. Kwon,
"Integration
of
Micromouse
Project
with
Undergraduate Curriculum: A Large-Scale Student
Participation Approach," IEEE Transactions on
Education, pp.136-144, May, 1995.
Figure 4. Competition arrangement
Advantages of proposed competition
2. M. C. Fairhurst, "Computer Vision for Robotic
Systems: An Introduction,"Prentice Hall 1988.