UAF MicroMouse team earns fifth consective first place finish

May 6, 2011

University Relations

The MicroMouse team from the UAF Electrical and Computer Engineering Department returned from Boise with their fifth consecutive first-place finish and a check for winning.

MicroMouse is an IEEE-sponsored student competition where students build small autonomous robots to navigate and find a way to the center of a maze the students have not seen before. The fastest mouse to the center wins the competition.

UAF students have been participating in this competition for a number of years. It is an extracurricular event, as it is not associated with any specific class, but students learn by building the MicroMouse from scratch, incorporating what they've learned about sensors, motors, battery and energy management, mechanical structures, encoders, gear drives, microprocessors and programming to design and create the MicroMouse. In this way, the competition is a lot like an industrial project, incorporating a large number of features and skills into a single product, all developed in a team environment.

The MicroMouse initially knows only the size of the maze, 16x16, and that it starts in a corner. It has to map out the walls as it goes, filling in a matrix in its memory. After it has mapped enough of the maze to preclude any unknown shorter paths, it makes a speed run to the center, accelerating on straightaways, cutting corners and moving diagonally when feasible to achieve the fastest possible time.

The UAF team builds upon their past successes and each year produces a smarter and faster MicroMouse.  Steven Kibler and the MicroMouse team are always a highlight of the Engineering Open House.

A youtube video shows this year's winning run.  The speed run at the end of the video is most interesting.