Re: Maze Simulator

[NickWSmith@cs.com]

Not sure if you got any replies before, apologies for my long delay.  Good luck with your project!

Sterling Mouse(1980 Champion) takes 0.9 seconds to travel one square in a straight line.  Squares with 90 degree corners take 3.4 seconds.  This is much longer because Sterling stops, spins about its central axis, and then starts moving again.  I would regard this as a ratio of 4 to 1 as I don't think that actual speed is relevant to your study.

Michael Schumouser(2002 Failure...) takes 0.6 seconds per square.  Squares with corners take 0.7 seconds.  This is much nearer the straight time because Schumouser drives around corners and although he has to slow down, the actual distance travelled is less than a straight.  Say a ratio of 1 to 1.

Michael has a faster straight mode (not seen in public unfortunately) where the first and last squares in a straight take 0.6 seconds, second and next to last take 0.3 seconds and any other squares take 0.2 seconds each.

More advanced mice do 45 degree corners and can travel around the maze on diagonal lines.  If you want to know more about this kind of thing let me know and I will see what I can do.

I would imagine the various performance figures above would result in different mice choosing different quickest (rather than shortest) routes.  But, does this mean they should have differing search strategies?

Most mice simply try to reach the target by the shortest possible route from wherever they are (often miles away from the actual shortest route).  Other strategies have been tried including an exhaustive search of the maze before route finding.  Some people are pretty coy about their ideas though so who knows what they do.

I think calculating the quickest route through a maze is a quite different question as to how a maze should be searched in order to establish/confirm the quickest route.  I think this is more like a PhD question though (anyone want to offer me one?)

I hope the above is helpful to you.  Good luck with your studies and let me know the results.

Nick