Scaling the Micromouse to the real world
I spent some time in a toy store yesterday looking at some of the model vehicles and thinking about how they scale to their real counterparts. Of course I started to wonder about how some of the top micromouse competitors would scale to the real world, so I did some back of the envelope calculations comparing Itani-san's MM3 mouse and the new Citroen C4.
MM3 | C4 | Ratio | |
|
|
| |
Length (mm) | 130 | 4,260 | 32.77 |
Height (mm) | 52 | 1,458 | 28.04 |
Width (mm) | 60 | 1,773 | 29.55 |
A rough scale factor would seem to be 30:1. When MM3 won the 2002 All Japan Micromouse competition it raced across 75 cells with 37 turns at an average speed of 1,508 mm/sec. Scaling that up it corresponds to a real world speed of 162 kph (101 mph). Imagine driving a race car at 160 kph over a course that's only 400 meters long but includes 37 right angle turns with very little clearance. Really breath-taking performance.
You might also enjoy:
- MicroMouse Speed
- The 25th All Japan Micromouse Contest
- Micromouse Robot Maze Solution Simulation
- Micromouse – Initial Perceptions versus Reality
- Which Way Do We Go, Which Way Do We Go…
3 comments
Leave a Reply
Interesting Idea, however I very much doubt it would work quite that well…
By the looks of it, you have done a very simple scaling but, if you were to look further into it, you would notice that the power/weight ratio would change exponentially as you increase mass.
Also the inertia involved would mean that the 90° turns would not be possible without adding sort of breaking system to decrease velocity before the turns.
You’re correct – it wouldn’t work out quite that well, but nevertheless, the micromouse performance is extremely impressive. If you would like to work out the actual math and physics, I would be happy to publish it for all our readers.
While I’d love to, Im afraid I’ll have to decline… I just don’t have that much time on my hands (smirk)….
But I’m sure it would make an interesting read if someone were to.
And yes, I must agree, the MM performance is impressive.