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Re: Wall followers


Well, I wanted a sprint maze competition for year-on-year resuls, but my
intention was that we will keep running the main wall follower competition
in the full maze too, so no loss of surprise element.

I should just re-iterate that the main reasons both Duncan and I are keen
on wall followers is that (i) they are easier to build than high-speed
white line followers and (ii) there are at least four radically different
ways of attacking the problem which might allow some schools to have a bit
of internal variation too: I recall that one school at Manchester
(Ampleforth?) had a large set of very similar mice.

                         A

On Sat, 30 Jun 2001, Chris Walker wrote:

> I like the thought of including a wall-following class in the School's
> Competition.  Duncan's presentation at Manchester this year (DIM running
> around the standard demo course) caught the interest of our pupils and would
> be a natural lead in to the full maze competition.
>
> On the negative side, the problems I see are:
>
> a) Multiplicity of formulae - someone on the list mentioned previously that,
> with too many competitions on offer, schools may spread their efforts too
> thinly, rather than concentrating on developing one or two really good mice.
>
> b) For the competition, I don't like the idea of everyone running in the
> standard mini-maze (was this actually what you meant, Adrian?).  I think the
> surprise element of a secret maze layout is important (perhaps use an 8x8
> maze for transportability) - if everyone is going to run a standard course
> why doesn't every school just run their course at home and submit a video of
> their efforts?  Although I accept the usefulness of the standard course for
> record times etc.
>
> Adrian, your offer of organising School's publicity over summer sounds
> great - as Jerry points out, so that School's can start thinking as soon as
> they get back.
>
> Chris Walker,
> Bolton School.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "A Johnstone" <adrian@cs.rhul.ac.uk>
> To: "Duncan Louttit" <duncan@swallow.co.uk>
> Cc: <micromouse@cs.rhul.ac.uk>
> Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2001 5:40 PM
> Subject: Re: Wall followers
>
>
> >
> >
> > Dear all, apropos Duncan's message, I think we'd like to offer a
> > competition based on this small maze (or something like it) for wall
> > followers. The idea would be to have a simple course (like the IEE schools
> > ones) that could be constructed for a few pounds but which would generate
> > mice that can do a wall-following run in the main maze. The goals would be
> > (i) to have an entry point for schools and (ii) to have a demo maze that I
> > can cart round in the back of my car.
> >
> > As Duncan has rightly pointed out, there are more degress of freedom in
> > the deisgn of a wall follower mouse than the IE schools white line
> > followers which make for a more interesting engineering challenge, so I
> > would hope that we might get a lot of interest. I've seen at least three
> > radically different types of wall follower mice based on Lego mindstorms
> > alone (i.e. Shannon's Mr Cheese, our Dim and an earlier RH effort which
> > uses a pair of light sensors).
> >
> > I wonder what list subsribers in schools think? And Jerry - if you are
> > going to run another event in Manchester next year how do you feel about
> > including a wall following challenge?
> >
> > If people agree that this would be a fun thing to do then I'll organise
> > some schools' publicity over the Summer.
> >
> >                    Adrian
> >
> >
> > On Sun, 24 Jun 2001, Duncan Louttit wrote:
> >
> > > Hi Everyone,
> > >
> > > Following a chat with Adrian at the Manchester competition, I have
> revised
> > > my design for a wall-follower test course. The website version has been
> > > updated. Look at
> > >
> > > http://www.swallow.co.uk/umouse/miniwall.htm
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > >
> > > Duncan
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> > Dr Adrian Johnstone, Senior Lecturer in Computing, Computer Science Dep,
> > Royal Holloway, University of London,  Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX, England.
> > Email a.johnstone@rhul.ac.uk Tel:+44(0)1784 443425 Fax:+44(0)1784 439786
> >
>
>

Dr Adrian Johnstone, Senior Lecturer in Computing, Computer Science Dep,
Royal Holloway, University of London,  Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX, England.
Email a.johnstone@rhul.ac.uk Tel:+44(0)1784 443425 Fax:+44(0)1784 439786
References: