Good, free running wheels are an essential part of the drive train on your micromouse. Not only is there little point in wasting power driving inefficient wheels but it is important to make both sides as similar as possible to avoid any natural tendency to wander off to one side.…
The 2012 National Schools and Colleges Micromouse competition took place on Saturday 16th June as part of the TechFest event at the Technology Innovation Centre in Birmingham. Good numbers of competitors in each event guaranteed keen competition amongst the ever-enthusiastic juniors and it was pleasing to see the trophies spread…
What a busy day! The 2012 Techfest event held by Birmingham City University at Millennium Point, on June 16th was packed with robotic activity. There was something for everyone with events including mini-sumo, ant-weight robot wars, line following, drag races, wall followers and micromouse. In a slight change from previous…
Pretty well everything is ready now to put together Decimus 4 - my latest micromouse. The last part to be done was the wheels. While I had the materials and the tools to make these, I certainly didn't have the time so I thought I might as well try having…
On Saturday June 16th, Birmingham City University holds the second annual Techfest event at Millenium Point in Birmingham. This will also be the 9th successive year that BCU hosts the UK micromouse competition. Once more there will be an International lineup of competitors including St. Josephs Institution from Singapore coming for…
Soon after listening to the presentation by Martyn Pittuck at Minos12 about Shapeways printed parts, I designed and ordered the motor mounts for my micromouse, Decimus 4. The design part was a bit harder than I expected because of a poor decision taken previously about the PCB outline but ordering…
Arguably the most important turn that a micromouse can perform is the search turn. That is, a simple 90 degree turn performed while the mouse is still searching the maze. While searching, the mouse generally has no idea what is waiting around the next corner. A decision has to be…
Preparation of Decimus2B for the UK micromouse contest in four weeks or so proceeds apace. The mouse is faster than it has ever been, it is more accurate than it has ever been and it turns better than it ever has before. Does it work well? Of course not. During…
When a micromouse corners faster, sooner or later, it will run out of grip. That doesn't mean it can not perform a useful turn but it will drift instead of neatly following a tangential path around the turn. To find out where the limits might be for Decimus 2B, it…
The Midlands Micromouse and Robotics Club, in conjunction with the Robotics and Intelligent Systems SIG will be hosting a talk by Roumen Ivanov on Monday May 28th at 18:30. The venue will be the normal club meeting area at Millenium Point in Birmingham. (more…)