MICROMOUSE An Introduction
WHAT IS MICROMOUSE? •
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 •
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) •
Initial $100 deposit
• IEEE will provide $250 worth of parts to build your Micromouse •
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) •
Initial $200 deposit
• IEEE will provide up to $500 worth of parts to build your Micromouse •
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? •
Extremely reliable
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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
[email protected]
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
