Arguably the most successful Japanese micromouse builder is Itani Yutaka. If you follow the micromouse goings-on in Japan and south East Asia, you will have come across him as the builder of the six-wheeled micromouse known as mm3 and shown in the picture on the left. He posts to a wiki site and recently has added a list of the winning entry for each of the Japanese competitions to date…
You can find the relevant page here:
Itani Yutaka Historical Micromouse Results
The page is, naturally, in Japanese but you ca easily pass it through the Google translator – or use this link (English translation). In the list you will see that Itani-san has won the competition nine times. While you are there, notice also how average speeds have improved. The calculation is not to reliable since it simply divides the number of cells by the time taken without taking into account the complexity of the course.
On the same page you will see a pictorial history of the Japan winners as well as some pictorial evidence of the innovative designs from Itani-san.
While the rest of the site is mostly work-related, it is well worth a look for other snippets. Among these, you will find an interesting inverted-pendulum balancer made from a small racing car.
