An Introduction

MICROMOUSE

WHAT IS MICROMOUSE?• An autonomous maze-solving robot

• Many interesting and innovative designs exist to sense and navigate the maze

• Competitions began in the 1970s and have continued throughout today

• Worldwide competitions held yearly in Asia and North America

YOUR LEADSName: 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)

• Feedback control:

• Keep the mouse centered

• Don’t hit the walls!

• 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

• 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!

• 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

• Improved precision

• Compact and lightweight

• Requires EAGLE CAD knowledge

• UCLA IEEE holds Eagle workshops a few times throughout the year!

• Highly recommended for competitive mice or those with more EE experience

• 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

• All lecture presentations will be posted there

• Additional information on parts, hardware, and software will be posted there as well

• Micromouse wiki: http://micromouse.ieeebruins.org

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 micromouse@ieee.ucla.edu

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