Micromouse

May 28, 2023 1:44 AM

In a 25 minute very accessible video titled The Fastest Maze-Solving Competition On Earth, Veratasium tells us about Micromouse , a yearly competition that has been going since the 1970s, where the object is to get a small robotic mouse to navigate a maze in the shortest possible time.
posted by Harald74 (14 comments total)

This is so cool, just heard of this whole thing because of your link. So thanks, Harald74!
posted by Meatbomb at 9:05 AM on May 28, 2023

A surprisingly nuanced competition which the video did a great job laying out. And those little fans they figured out could be used to generate downforce. Incredible.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 9:14 AM on May 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

Great video, thanks for the share!

I always found it a curious game when TechTV aired BBC's Techno Games. How the mice worked, etc.
posted by JoeXIII007 at 10:08 AM on May 28, 2023

Ooh, I was hoping to track this down! Saw a couple snippets out of context on some scraper account on TikTok. Thanks for posting it!
posted by cortex at 10:09 AM on May 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

I remember seeing both micromouse and the original "full sized" mousebot competitions in the 80s, and stumbled on some micromouse and other related bot competitions a few years ago, and the current speeds that they have these things moving at and solving mazes is absolutely incredible.

This is one of those things where if you took a modern micromouse back in time a few decades and entered a competition you would either get accused of witchcraft and cheating OR you'd be the recipient of a lot of unwanted industry attention and very large research grants.

There's so much technological advancement between the 70s and 80s and it goes way beyond using fans for downforce. Even the tiny printed circuit board designs and surface mount microelectronics and tiny batteries would blow people's minds and that's long before they notice the general purpose supercomputer on a single chip.
posted by loquacious at 10:17 AM on May 28, 2023 [5 favorites]

I really appreciated watching this. Thanks so much for posting it! I welcome our new micromouse overlords.
posted by hippybear at 11:46 AM on May 28, 2023

This is very cool. Passed it along to my son in high school robotics.
posted by slogger at 11:55 AM on May 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

I liked how it seemed like the maze speeds were maxed out, then they figured out a completely new method to zoom through the maze even faster. And then even more speed with other new ideas.
posted by jjj606 at 1:03 PM on May 28, 2023

This was a fun thing to learn about, thanks! As someone without much of a programming background, I particularly found the explanation of the different algorithm approaches was presented in a remarkably coherent way.
posted by eponym at 1:08 PM on May 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Thanks for posting this! That video was fascinating, and a blast of nostalgia for me. Around 1980 I was given a kid’s book on tech and science by National Geographic, and it had a page on micro mouse. I reread that book until it fell apart when I was a kid. Cool to see micomouse is still going strong all these years later.
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:43 PM on May 28, 2023

I didn’t know anything at all about micro mouse. This was super fun!
posted by obfuscation at 6:04 PM on May 28, 2023

This is awesome and completely new to me! Thanks for the post!

Note that the “Second Fosbury Flop” innovation, ducted fans, was used in full sized car racing with the Chaparral 2J during the 1970 Can Am series (and quickly banned as it was too effective).
posted by skyscraper at 9:02 PM on May 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

Delightful. Other anime nerds will no doubt appreciate the Japanese fellow naming his speedster mouse Red Comet.
posted by Aznable at 8:49 AM on May 29, 2023

Here is a video showing the McMurtry fan car breaking the Goodwood hill climb record.

As well as going blisteringly fast, it both looks and sounds funny.
posted by Harald74 at 5:49 AM on May 31, 2023