How many walls do you need for a square maze?

At the Japanese contest, Peter said there is a closed form solution for the maximum number of walls a legal micromouse maze can have. (more…)

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All Japan Micromouse 2011 – results

A comprehensive set of results for the 2011 All Japan Micromouse Contest is now available from the NTF web site. You can find the maze layouts, prizes and results tables for all the events that were run. (more…)

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Zeetah V’s path in the 2011 All Japan Qualfication

Once ZV had explored the maze, it did a speed run and the path it took in the upper right portion of the maze was very different than the other competitors. (more…)

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All Japan Micromouse 2011 – finals

All the preparation and practice was over. The qualifiers had been held and the wheat sorted from the chaff. Now it was time to see who had what it takes to be the champion – the builder of possibly the fastest robots on the planet… (more…)

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All Japan Micromouse 2011 – Qualifying Day

The All Japan micromouse contest attracts a large number of participants. This year, the expert class has an entry list of 84 and there are 99 entries in the freshman class. With so many mice to run, Saturday is needed to thin the field and select the best contestants for the finals on Sunday…. (more…)

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All Japan Micromouse 2011 – Practice day

Today is Friday, November 18th and I am back in Tsukuba for the 32nd All Japan Micromouse Contest. This is my third visit and it is just as exciting as the first… (more…)

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Simple font data for LED matrix displays

My next mouse will have to have one of those small LED matrix displays. Not only is it actually useful to have a way of getting some feedback from the mouse, but these days, you feel a bit left out without one. There are numerous examples of 5×5 matrix font data available but when you need to design special characters it can get a bit tedious. Not being able to find anything suitable to help me, that would also run on a mac, I turned to Excel for help… (more…)

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STLINK SWD for STM32

The standard JTAG connector for ARM processors is the huge 20 pin IDC header. It has a whole bunch of unused pins and takes up a lot of board space. There are a several alternatives that reduce the pin count but, for a bare minimum, you can use Serial Wire Debug (SWD)… (more…)

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STM32F4 – the first taste of speed

The recently announced STM32F4 series of processors using the ARM Cortex M4 are very attractive. High speeds, large memory space and a floating point unit are among the obvious benefits although there are many other architectural changes in the ST chips. This evening, I managed to get my STM32F4-Discovery board doing something…
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Robot Cyclist

There is a long-held view that robots will, or should, exist to relieve human from the drudgery of everyday life. They should be used for tasks too tedious, or too dangerous for humans to perform. Now, at last, both goals have been achieved in one robot… (more…)

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