RE: minimal maze solvers

Hi John and Everyone,

I like AVRs but I am looking at ARMs as well now. I don't like PICs for aesthetic reasons but I didn't like 5051s either and I have used them a lot.

PICAXEs are not just limited by the chip resources. They are programmed in PICAXE BASIC which is ssllooooww. This also uses a lot of the resources so there are serious overheads. The BASIC is probably the biggest limitation. PICONE manages it O.K. but does use two of the larger chips. A maze solver using an 08M would be a challenge.

There is a thriving PICAXE community and software tricks are quickly passed around. Once someone has a solution to making a solver with this level of resourcing, it would be necessary to redefine the challenge. It's a bit like the classic maths problems. For example, once someone has solved the map colouring problem it became uninteresting. The problem must be nearly soluble but not quite!

Regards,

Duncan

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-micromouse@cs.rhul.ac.uk [mailto:owner-micromouse@cs.rhul.ac.uk]On Behalf Of WJP001@aol.com
Sent: 06 April 2009 09:54
To: micromouse@cs.rhul.ac.uk
Subject: Re: minimal maze solvers

Hi Duncan et al.

    "would not approve" referred to the choice of processor, I thought you were a died in the wool Atmel user!

    I have never used a PICAXE, but assuming there are no serious overheads which prevent the full use of all the resources of the base chip, I cannot see why they should not solve mazes. I agree with the comment about all mice tending to become the same and accept that with minimal mice this process could be more rapid.

    The dynamics and chassis design will give scope for originality since the requirements are not the same as a conventional mouse and there is not much processor power available to overcome shortcomings in this area. Also a small processor does not have space to optimise the route using conventional flooding, this leaves space for new maze solving ideas.

    For adults and older students, a "one make series" should select a target device which is too small to succeed with a conventional approach. Otherwise you are back to the problems of handicaps.

cheers

John
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