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APEC MicroMouse Contest Offers Some Sweet Cheese To Competitors

The Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition will be hosting its annual Micromouse event this March for the 20th year in a row, and features very attractive cash prizes (really sweet cheese) and trophies to competitors in a number of categories. The competition is always well attended and draws some of the top micromouse designs in the U.S. and internationally.

The competition will take place on Monday evening, March 20th, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Dallas, Texas. Unfortunately, because it’s over 5,000 miles away, and the Robo-One competition will be held here in Tokyo the same weekend, we won’t be able to attend in person – but we would really appreciate any reports, photos, or videos if you attend or compete in the event.

According to David Otten of MIT, a leading advocate of micromouse competitions world wide, one of the strong points of micromouse competitions is that unlike other robot contests the rules have remained basically the same for many, many years. This has allowed micromouse builders to consistently hone their robots performance and build a wealth of know-how and shared knowledge.

  Micromouse robot designs can be
  compact, extremely sophisticated,
  and lightening fast.

For example, the APEC micromouse robot competition uses the same scoring system that was used for the IEE World Final in London back in 1987 with some minor modifications. And, the All Japan Micromouse robot contest that celebrated its 26th anniversary last November has used the same set of competition rules for decades. 

 Some micromouse competitors have
 robots that look like SF race cars,
 and travel just as fast.

According to the official event webpage (see link below), the prizes include:

Two categories – Open and Student

1st place: US$500
2nd place: US$250
3rd place: US$125

Special award: US$500 for any registered team whose mouse reaches the center of the maze

Fastest individual run: US$500

Related links:

APEC MicroMouse Contest Webpage

David Otten Interview (Video) – November, 2005 – Tokyo, Japan

Micromouse articles

Micromouse Videos

Posted by Lem on February 5, 2006 | Permalink | Email this post

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