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Micro-Mouse Story

APEC '99 MICROMOUSE CONTEST

The thirteenth annual APEC Micromouse Contest was held at the Adam’s Mark Hotel in Dallas, Texas on March 15, 1999. A total of 13 mice were on hand, including 6 foreign teams. Kwa Gwang from Korea came in first with the best score and the fastest run. Ning 2 from Singapore was awarded the second prize and CUQEE III from Australia received the third prize. The Best Student Prize also went to Kwa Gwang from Korea. All the contestants are listed in the table below.

List of Contestants for APEC ‘99 Micromouse Contest

Cash prizes were awarded again this year. Kwa Gwang received US$150 for first place and US$150 for the best student entry.

The contest was held on Monday night after the exposition so that everyone at the conference could attend. To handle the audience of close to 200 people, an aerial view of the maze was projected on a large screen behind the judge’s table.

Gerardo Molina prepared the maze design once again. APEC has developed a reputation for very difficult maze designs. This year’s design had two paths to the center, a shorter path covering 96 squares and a longer one with several long diagonals covering 100 squares. Both were used. The maze allowed the mice to demonstrate their capabilities without loosing the attention of the audience during the search phase.

The table below contains a list of the scores for each mouse that was able to solve the maze. The score is based on 1/30 of the time used to search the maze prior to the start of each run (maze time), and the time of that run (run time). If the mouse has not crashed or been restarted prior to the start of a run, a bonus of 3 seconds is subtracted from the score.

Scores for All Completed Runs of each Mouse

CUQEE III has raced three times before at APEC, wining the last two years. It is small (260 gm) and very smart. It is able to search without stopping and incorporates diagonals during the search when retracing its steps. Gordon Wyeth is a professor with the Computer and Electrical Engineering department of the University of Queensland

Damian Zdenek Mousekinsen weighs 140 grams plus 2.5 grams for a detachable 418MHz FM transmitter for diagnostics. It is powered by four 350mAh NiCad cells. Two 3 volt, 1319 MicroMo DC motors are driven by analog PWM current controllers. The processor is an MC68HC912B32 with 32k of flash memory, 768 bytes of EEPROM and 1k of RAM. Two infrared side wall sensors are located on each side of the mouse with an additional sensor pointing forward. Gerrit Aartsen works as a Technical Specialist at the University of Western Ontario in Canada and has been building mice for many years.

Voyager is the first mouse that David Woodfield has designed and built since 1985. He has chosen to migrate from DC motors in the original Enterprise to steppers in this newer version. The original tricycle was also traded in for a wheel chair design. With each succeeding contest Voyager gets a little smarter and goes a little faster. David Woodfield is an independent circuit designer with products ranging from chess games to shock absorbers to his credit.

Kwa Gwang means sound of lighting in Korean. This stepper motor driven mouse is powered by sixteen 250mAh NiCd cells. The processor is an AMD188ES. Six infrared side wall sensors guide the mouse. Special features of the mouse include non-stop, high-speed searching, diagonal operation when retracing its path during the search, and some resemblance to a real mouse. Kwa Gwang was the winner of the 19^th All Japan Micromouse Contest held in Tokyo last November. Mr. Roh Chang Hyun is a senior in Electrical Engineering at Korea University.

MITEE Mouse 8 had a loose wheel at APEC last year and a failed gearbox the year before that, however it recently came in 6^th at the 19^th All Japan Final. It uses DC motors with NiCd batteries and weighs 200 grams. Mr. Otten and his partner Tony Caloggero are staff members at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ning 2 was inspired by the Korean mice that raced at the 18^th All Japan Micromouse Contest. It was designed by Mr. Ng Beng Kiat, a lecturer at Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore.

NPDC1 and NPDC2 are both designed by students from Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore. These two mice use DC motors; previous mice from Ngee Ann have used stepper motors. Ngee Ann has a program to teach mechatronics to its students through micromouse design and construction.

Pinocchio is a stepper motor driven wheel chair style mouse powered by 20 rechargeable cells. It was originally designed and built in 1996. It uses a Z80 processor and weighs approximately 5 pounds. Walls are sensed with 12 infrared sensors. Pinocchio has won both the 1997 and 1998 IEEE Region 1 micromouse competition. Mr. Gim Soon Wan is a student at Merrimack College in Massachusetts.

Sterling is the very first mouse to ever get to the center of a maze in a micromouse contest! It accomplished this feat at the 1^st European final held in London in 1980 in a time of 3 minutes and 49 seconds. This stepper motor driven mouse is powered by 12 NiCd cells and uses an RCA 1802 processor with 1k of EPROM and 1k of RAM. An ingenious system of mechanical arms with magnetically activated reed relays is used to sense the walls on either side. A single micro switch detects any walls in front of the mouse. APEC is very pleased to welcome Nick Smith to the contest this year.

Zeetah IV is a new 4-wheel drive, 4-wheel steering mouse. It has DC motors for drive and steering and is powered by 7 NiMH cells. Weighing in at 450 grams, it measures 3.1" x 5.1" x 2.5". Intelligence comes from a Motorola 68336 processor clocked at 22 MHz with 256k bytes of RAM and ROM. It uses 14 side wall sensors. Mr. Singh currently works for Microsoft.

Best Score = 15.33 seconds

Fastest Run = 15.20 seconds

Start

Figure 1 APEC '99 Maze Design