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FW: Questions about the Micromouse & Maze
FYI:
I think it is curious, that those in the know want to force the competition
into much smaller mice and mazes, and new undergraduate students want to
bring a 35cm mouse to the contest. I think this supports the rationale not
to mess with a good thing ;-).
John
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Clark Fahmie [mailto:pengo@cats.ucsc.edu]
Sent: Friday, March 01, 2002 1:18 AM
To: John Wright
Subject: RE: Questions about the Micromouse & Maze
> Rule 3.4
> no portion of your mouse can exceed 25cm across.
So a mouse must fit into a circle with a 25cm diameter?
you can probably tell already that I really want to bend that restriction
rule. Unless the circle restriction is how the rules are to be read, then
I could make a strong case for having a sensor arm that is 35.5cm.
Granted though, you're right I should probably be focusing my
attention to other areas. I just figured my interpretation of the size
restrictions was a good (and possibly legitamate) trick to be able to make
a longer piece, which would really help.
mike
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Clark Fahmie [mailto:pengo@cats.ucsc.edu]
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2002 5:45 PM
To: John Wright
Subject: RE: Questions about the Micromouse & Maze
Thanks for the answers, though I do have some follow up questions which
are embedded below =)
> <JW>
> The x and y axis of the mouse cannot exceed 25cm at any time. If there
were
> some reconfiguration of the mouse while it was in the maze (for those of
you
> raised with Transformer toys :-), the whole thing has to happen within the
> 25cm limitation. The structure of the maze itself, limits the channle the
> mouse has to traverse to 16.8cm square, so the actual base of the mouse
> cannot be more than 16cm (or much less) or it physically will not fit in
the
> maze. Some simple trig will show that teh base of the mouse should really
> be less than 8cm, if you wish to traverse the diagonal channels in the
maze.
> You are allowed to go to 25cm, so that you can have arms looking down over
> the tops of the walls, to sense if a wall is there or not. A better, more
> more technically challenging design, would be to look at the sides of the
> walls, instead of the tops, and keep the whole size of the mouse much
> smaller than 25cm.
You didn't quite answer my question, which makes me think you already know
what I'm going for.. I hope this ascii picture helps.... The '*'s depict
the outline of the mouse, and the square is the 25cm x 25cm boundry.
_________________________
|* |
| * |
| * |
| * |
| * |
| * * |
| * * |
| * * |
|* * * |
| * * * |
| * * * |
|______*_______________*|
If i construct my mouse diagonally within the restraints. I can make a
sensor arm that is the length of the diagonal. Is this acceptable? Given
that essentially my mouse will fit into a 25cm x 25cm box. If necessary
you can consider the top of the drawing to be the front and the normal
operation to be driving diagonally.
> <JW>
> All of this is about the construction of the maze. Go downstairs in the
> basement of your EE building and look at teh mice on display and I believe
> they have one cell of a maze in that display case. The intent is to have
> the walls and lattice points smooth and uniform. In reality, they will be
> different pieces of wood joined together, and they are sometimes a very
> tight fit. You should never see more than 0.25cm delta at the seams, but
> allowing for 1cm offset would be a very wise move.
I still dont understand the lattice points, are they wider than the walls
by 1.2cm as the rules seem to imply?
> <JW>
> Yes, if you damage the maze in any way, several of the other competitors
> just might take you outside. Other than that, this is not a contact
sport.
> The intention is to drop your robot in the start cell, turn it on, and
have
> it make repetative speed runs until you mouse (gently) wipes out and the
> previous run is the fastest time on the maze. You may, with the one
> addition of a time penalty, choose at any time to pull your mouse off the
> maze, restart it and continue that pattern until you are done. This would
> be useful if you have not designed the mouse with powerful enough motors
and
> it could not motor back to the start fast enough, or it is too dumb to
find
> it's own way back. This is not the prefered operating mode, but we allow
for
> it, with the time penalty.
I didn't find mention of the time penalties in the rules, how do they
work (as in does it add to your run time or subtract from your 10
minutes)? and how much are the time penaties?
thanks again,
mike