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#micromouse#robotics#mazesolving

The Fastest Maze-Solving Competition On Earth

Veritasium

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YouTube
  • Recommended by 7 people: 5 on Hacker News and 2 on Lobsters.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

25M views3 years ago7 recommendations

HardwareComputer scienceAlgorithmsEmbedded systems

An exploration of the Micromouse competition, detailing how autonomous robots use advanced algorithms and hardware engineering to solve mazes at high speeds.

Welcome to Micromouse, the fastest maze-solving competition on Earth. Join Onshape’s community of over 3 million CAD users by creating a free account here: Onshape.pro/Veritasium. Special thanks to our Patreon supporters! Join this community to help us keep our videos free, forever: ve42.co/PatreonDEB ▀▀▀ A huge thank you to Peter Harrison for all of his help introducing us to the world of Micromouse – check out ukmars.org & micromouseonline.com. Thank you to David Otten, APEC, and the All-Japan Micromouse Competition for having us. Thank you to Juing-Hei (youtube.com/@suhu9379) & Derek Hall (youtube.com/@MicroMouse) for usage of their micromouse videos. Thank you to John McBride, Yusaku Kanagawa, and Katie Barnshaw for their help with Japanese translations. ▀▀▀ References: Claude Shannon Demonstrates Machine Learning, AT&T Tech Channel Archive - ve42.co/ClaudeShannon Mighty mouse, MIT News Magazine - ve42.co/MightyMouse History, Micromouse Online Blog - ve42.co/MMHistory Christiansen, D. (1977). Spectral lines: Announcing the Amazing Micro-Mouse Maze Contest. IEEE Spectrum, vol. 14, no. 5, pp. 27-27 - ve42.co/Christiansen1977 Allan, R. (1979). Microprocessors: The amazing micromice: See how they won: Probing the innards of the smartest and fastest entries in the Amazing Micro-Mouse Maze Contest. IEEE Spectrum, vol. 16, no. 9, pp. 62-65, - ve42.co/Allan1979 1977-79 – “MOONLIGHT SPECIAL” Battelle Inst. (American), CyberNetic Zoo - ve42.co/MoonlightSpecial Christiansen, D. (2014). The Amazing MicroMouse Roars On. Spectral Lines - ve42.co/Christiansen2014 1986 - MicroMouse history, competition & how it got started in the USA, via YouTube - ve42.co/MMArchiveYT The first World Micromouse Contest in Tsubuka, Japan, August 1985 [1/2] by TKsTclip via YouTube - ve42.co/MMTsukubaYT IEEE. (2018). Micromouse Competition Rules - ve42.co/IEEERules Tondra, D. (2004). The Inception of Chedda: A detailed design and analysis of micromouse. University of Nevada - ve42.co/Tondra2004 Braunl, T. (1999). Research relevance of mobile robot competitions. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 32-37 - ve42.co/Braunl1999 All Japan Micromouse 2017 by Peter Harrison, Micromouse Online - ve42.co/RedComet Winning record of the national competition micromouse (half size) competition. mm3sakusya @ wiki (Google translated from Japanese) - ve42.co/JapanFinishTimes The Fosbury Flop—A Game-Changing Technique, Smithsonian Magazine - ve42.co/FosburyFlop Gold medal winning heights in the Men's and Women's high jump at the Summer Olympics from 1896 to 2020, Statistica - ve42.co/HighJump Zhang, H., Wang, Y., Wang, Y., & Soon, P. L. (2016). Design and realization of two-wheel micro-mouse diagonal dashing. Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, 31(4), 2299-2306. - ve42.co/Zhan

Why it's here

7 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended as a fascinating introduction to the technical history, algorithms, and extreme hardware engineering behind high-performance maze-solving robots.

riveron Lobsters • Recommends

The Fastest Maze-Solving Competition On Earth

toastalon Lobsters • Recommends

The Fastest Maze-Solving Competition On Earth

tstrimpleon Hacker News • Recommends

On “New world record with an electric racing car: From 0 to 100 in 0.956 seconds”

Cars designed for high speed will have a significant advantage over a motorcycle through capturing down forces to dramatically increase the amount of friction between the tires and the surface before losing grip and spinning out. Motorcycles can own the power to weight ratio category, but they can't use all that power because at that point the wheels just spin. I found it super interesting when I learned that one of the biggest advances in maze solving races is that someone ended up putting a fan in their little "mouse" to push down so the wheels could get more traction. link More details on maze racing from Veritasium: link to this video

v512on Hacker News • Recommends

On “0 To 100 kph in 1 second”

Veritasium did a video on Micromouse competition which also got the breakthrough via similar kind of technology (fan that sucks air from under the car) - link to this video Interesting watch.

_carbyau_on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Mitsubishi robot solves Rubik's Cube in 0.305s”

For me it was the Veritasium Micromouse video0. Hard to quote the video but from wikipedia1:"Micromice are among the highest-performing autonomous robots." Things like fans and ground effect being used to make these devices do 6g turns while mapping and solving a maze. Alternately, the world of quadcopters, face recognition (body warmth recognition required?), lidar will make for a terrifying battlefield. 0 link to this video 1 link

sllabreson Hacker News • Recommends

On “Physicists have created the most fiendishly difficult maze”

1 "The Fastest Maze-Solving Competition On Earth" (22 min) is a nice introduction to the competition and its technical history. 1 link to this video

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On “Ask HN: Best way to learn robotics with a 10 year old?”

A few months ago, I saw this documentary about maze-solving robots that really impressed me: link to this video This might be an interesting use case.