mouse performance

[Peter Harrison <peter_harrison@ntlworld.com>]

I don't think there is a single source of mouse performance data 
although there are a couple with records of precious competitions. These 
times are, of course heavily dependant upon the actual maze.

I have found data for a couple of mice on the net (you may need to mess 
with your font settings to see this neatly) :

Name		Ning 2		Min2		Min3		MM3
owner		Ng Beng Kiat	Ng Beng Kiat	Ng Beng Kiat	Itani
length	mm	122		117		113		130
width	mm	80		75		74		60
height	mm	70		50		41		52
mass	g	713		332		290		350
speed	m/s	2.5		2		2.1		2.6
accn	m/s/s	2.5		2.5		2.8		3.2

For what it is worth, Maximus (you remember - knocks down walls and 
crashed a lot) was set for an acceleration 2.8 m/s/s and a top speed of 
2 m/s.

It is clear from the table above that a mouse that can handle 
consistently at 3 and 3 would be in with a good chance against most 
competition.

All the above mice can accelerate much harder and travel much faster. I 
believe these are the actual running settings used.

If anyone else would like to share their performance data, I am sure we 
would all be interested. It is good to know what you have to achieve to 
be in with a chance. Now, controlling all that power....

The only common test I have come across on the Japanese sites is a full 
circuit around the outside of the maze. The simplest way to set this up 
would be to time the mouse between subsequent passes through the start 
gate, having removed the east wall from the start cell. Mice would then 
just need to be told to do a simple set of moves. I have asked Tony if 
we can have such an event at the proposed semi-formal  autumn/winter 
event at TIC. We are looking at the end of November I think. More 
details from Tony if we can go ahead with this. I have a video somewhere 
of a stepper driven mouse doing this in under 10 seconds and I think 6 
seconds would be a fair goal for a mouse accelerating at 3m/s/s.

As for how useful it is, well the ability to steer at speed is fairly 
critical and it is a simple, easy to set up task. Any well-defined, 
repeatable task would be interesting as a year-on-year comparison of 
performance. I have been unable to find published data for this although 
I am sure it exists somewhere. It may also be a good crowd-pleaser at a 
competition.

Pete Harrison