I think right around the time when I watched his video, I got my risc-v CPU inside an FPGA working, including interrupts. I was very hyped about building such a mouse with it, just to prove to myself that my CPU can actually do something "real". It don't need to be the fastest, lightest, smallest, but a small robot that can solve a maze would be cool.
Then I tried to lay things out and realized how much more work that'd be, so I dropped the project (for now).
One day I'll build one though! It's only a matter of years, I think.
Wow, these mice were a lot faster than I expected. In the last part of the video, they talk about fans in the mouse that suck the mouse to the ground to prevent slipping.
The first time the video shows a mouse, I was annoyed by them showing a very clearly sped up recording, which made it difficult to follow. Only later it dawned on me that it's real time, not sped up.
We have an autonomous robotics competition (established in 2000) in Bratislava called Istrobot. There are two brackets, one for LEGO robots (mainly for children) and another one for "more serious" robots.
Micromouse is one of the categories. It is pretty difficult to do with LEGO, we've tried and always failed. The main problem is that the stepper motors are not precise enough to turn 90 degrees and the error accumulates. We've even tried using a LEGO magnetometer, but it wasn't precise enough.
The other categories are easier in my opinion:
- Pathfinder: The robot has to follow a drawn line. The line is interrupted in some places, there is a tunnel and there can be obstacles -> in case of obstacles the robot needs to leave the line, avoid the obstacle and find the line again.
- Sumo: Two robots start in a drawn circle, once one of them leaves the circle the other one wins. There is a limit on mass and dimensions.
(There are some new categories as well, but I have never competed in/watched those.)
The competition is pretty great at engaging young kids in programming.
Maybe the mice could use mmwave to possibly see through maze walls. Or use a little 360 degree camera on a pole. I assume this would be classed as cheating though.
Sounds a fun competition :) Looking at the Veritasium video they're crazy fast.
Apparently, using a camera on a pole is not cheating, but it is not really necessary to "see through walls", as the robot has 10 minutes to score the best run, from start to finish, giving the robot enough time to explore the maze and figure out the best path. Only the fastest run counts.
The pole can make figuring out the best path easier, but at the cost of making the robot bigger and heavier, which I suppose is a problem when you see how fast the top contenders are moving.
At first, I thought this makes the problem of finding the optimal path rather easy, but on a second thought it's not, because the algorithm needs to take into account exact properties (max speed, acceleration/deceleration, turning), so each model of mouse may have dramatically different optimal routes.
I also imagine that mice will have a certain aggressiveness setting, perhaps even switching to a different route, using which you can achieve higher speed at the risk of a crash. It would be interesting to see if there are some strategies around it.
This actually sort of ruins the sport for me. I'm sure there's practical reasons for it, just like with BattleBot but it's just so... lame. Put them into an irregular tunnel maze, time them from the millisecond they enter.
Maybe they are arbitrary but they are the rules. They are the reasons the sport is how it is today.
And considering that there is actual competition and innovation, these are good rules.
Feel free to organize your own competition using the "blind maze" rules, maybe it will become a success, but it will be a different sport, which will test different skills. They can coexist, not one lamer than the other.
And that's bad, how? Is it a sport (where the optimal amount of luck is non-zero) or a scientific study? Also just make them run multiple mazes then. I tend to think of sport fundamentally as simulated warfare, the further you go from the mess of reality in pursuit of fairness and justice, the less worthy the endeavor becomes.
I'm not sure to be honest. http://rfpose.csail.mit.edu/ is something I've come across before to detect pose of a human behind a wall.
Just found https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVpXeO0DYDQ - "Sense the world with TI mmWave: See through rain and walls, and detect small objects", which looks very interesting.
Ti seems to make a number of mmwave evaluation boards/chips.
It’s kind of redundant because they have a reconnaissance phase which is (relatively) untimed. So they can map out the maze at their leisure, then use that map for the time trial.
I kinda want to try myself at building one but no idea whatsoever how do I even approach getting started. I've never done any projects that involved custom hardware.
Give it ago, for as little as £20[0] you can get a Raspberry pit kit which would let you build something similar to a micro mouse, ( I'm not sure if the actually raspberry pi is included/required.)
That's interesting, I actually have two Pi Zero's laying around I bought ages ago for another project. Though getting this kit shipped to Russia might range from a non-issue to challenging and expensive.
edit: yeah it's not on the list of countries they ship to which means if I were really insistent on buying it I'd have to use a mail forwarder which would cost like 2x the kit itself
The longevity of the competition makes it a nice visual demonstration of technology advances. I can't recall other such examples which would be so accessible and span so many decades.
Google image search (what GP tried) for “zx81 micromouse” but clicked on “The rest of the results might not be what you're looking for. See more anyway” at the bottom, which surfaced a link to https://forum.arduino.cc/t/its-1982-and-you-need-a-microcont....
I tend to take it as a challenge when someone claims they can’t find something on the net. ;)
I love how one competitor completely disparages his mouse:
- Can it be considered intelligent?
- No, it's absolutely dim. It will solve, I hope, a particular problem. Outside of this environment, it's useless. He's only following a set of instructions that I told him to do.
I bet that these days, that person would be a lot more enthusiastic: it's artificial intelligence!
I remember a write-up of this competition around the same time, a year or two earlier perhaps, in Popular Mechanics or some such magazine. From memory there were two main strategies: simple brute-force wall-followers and maze-mappers. The only bot I can remember was named Harvey Wallbanger.
