MICROMOUSE
An Introduction
WHAT IS MICROMOUSE?
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An autonomous maze-solving robot
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Many interesting and innovative designs exist to sense and navigate the maze
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Competitions began in the 1970s and have continued throughout today
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Worldwide competitions held yearly in Asia and North America
YOUR LEADS
Name: Andrew Chan
Major: EE, Class of 2016
Hobbies: Star Wars, GOT, physics, electronics
What I did last summer: Interned at Sothern California Edison, learned how
to drive the 405 and 5, ate a lot of good Asian food in SoCal
Name: Ivan Petkov
Major: CSE, Class of 2015
Hobbies: Programming, racquetball, gaming, and electronics!
What I did last summer: worked at Symantec, did a lot of (outside)
programming, and played Dishonored a lot
MICROMOUSE CORE CONCEPTS
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Hardware design:
• Microcontrollers
• Sensors and motors
• Layout (PCB or perfboard)
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Feedback control:
• Keep the mouse centered
• Don’t hit the walls!
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Path-finding:
• Floodfill, Dijikstra’s, A*, JPS, and many others!
• Memory efficiency: microcontrollers typically have a couple kilobytes of RAM!
BASIC BUDGET ($250)
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Initial $100 deposit
• IEEE will provide $250 worth of parts to build your Micromouse
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Goal: traverse 16 or more cells without touching any walls
• Mouse will have to handle left and right turns, as well as dead-ends
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Best option for beginners, even if you will try to solve the maze!
ADVANCED BUDGET ($500)
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Initial $200 deposit
• IEEE will provide up to $500 worth of parts to build your Micromouse
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Goal: Reach the center of a 16x16 maze!
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Great for experienced Micromouse participants, or highly competitive mice!
• Can afford higher precision encoders, motors, and sensors
TO (PC)B, OR NOT TO (PC)B?
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Extremely reliable
•
Improved precision
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Compact and lightweight
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Requires EAGLE CAD knowledge
• UCLA IEEE holds Eagle workshops a few times throughout the year!
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Highly recommended for competitive mice or those with more EE experience
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We now have a PCB milling machine in the lab!
• We can quickly create PCB prototypes for you*
*Terms and Details Apply
COMPETITIONS
• Plenty of opportunities to
compete!
• All-America MicroMouse
at UCLA
• California MicroMouse
(CAMM) at UCSD
• Region 6 Southern Area
MicroMouse
RESOURCES
• Weekly lectures
• Topics ranging from basic to advanced concepts useful for
beginners and veterans alike
RESOURCES
• Micromouse wiki: http://micromouse.ieeebruins.org
• All lecture
presentations will be
posted there
• Additional information
on parts, hardware,
and software will be
posted there as well
RESOURCES
• Workshop projects
• This year we will be introducing several mini-projects to
the program
• Each focuses on a core Micromouse topic
• e.g. Wall detection, maze traversal/turning, etc.
• It will allow you to practice the concepts you have
learned sooner, without having to wait to receive all your
parts
• More info will be given later!
EXPECTATIONS
• Do your best to attend lecture
• Work on the workshop projects
• Document your mouse!
• Schematics, parts, and software!
EXPECTATIONS
• Ask us questions!!
• We are here to point you in the right direction!
• If lectures are unclear or you want a different
explanation, ask us right away!
• Contact us at micromouse@ieee.ucla.edu
EXPECTATIONS
• And most importantly: have
fun!!!
• Micromouse is
awesome and a SUPER
rewarding project once
you get it running, even
if you don’t find the
center of the maze!
MICROMOUSE INFOSESSION CHECK IN CODE