My name is Peter Harrison. I live in England and have been interested in micromouse and small robots for a good many years. Sometime around 1998, I decided I should stop being interested and do something about it. As a result, I built my first micromouse. It was not pretty or fast but it did, after a lot of work, find its way to the centre of a contest maze. I was absurdly pleased with myself but getting to that stage was a lot of work. Nearly all of it I had to research and find out for myself.
At that point, I decided that there was no need for everyone to go through the same pain and that I would share what I found out as I built my mouse. thus was began the original version of this site. The old material is still here on the pages ‘micromouse book‘. The content is now a bit old and stale but, with that and the blog posts made since then, it should be possible to get a good head start on building your own mouse.
Much of the content is likely to be of use to any builder of small robots – sumo, line follower, whatever.
Since that scruffy start, I have managed to win the UK micromouse contest a couple of times in 2009 and 2010 and I have competed in Taiwan, Japan and the USA. I still have some way to go before I am competitive with the Singaporean and Japanese mice but every year (mostly) gets me a bit closer. Trouble is, they get better too.
One day, I tell myself, I will get around to re-writing the old stuff with all the newer material incorporated. Don’t hold your breath though. Similarly, I intend, one day, to do another complete but simple mouse with all the details published, including source code and schematics. Again, it probably won’t be soon.