May 19th, 2001: Cal Poly Pomona

The Cal Poly Pomona competition drew 8 mice from 5 different schools, the most I have yet to see. The quality of the mice is also getting better, 3 of the mice made their way to the center of the maze. Whether they made it to the center or not, all of the mice put on a good show and the audience really seemed to enjoy itself.

The contestants:

CSULB's "Code Rage" returning from the center cells

Cal State Long Beach's simplified maze-solving algorithm payed off once again. "Code Rage" quickly searched the maze, never paused, and found the center of the maze. It then retraced its route in an impressive 48 seconds guaranteeing it 1st place. Congratulations to the Long Beach team.

Our "Dexter" also performed very well. He worked his way through the maze, discovered several dead-ends during the search, and found the center of the maze after 4 minutes. I replaced him in the start square and this time Dexter took the most direct route. The audience cheered as he used smooth arc turns. The second run took only 1 minute and 19 seconds which was good enough for 2nd place.

UCSB's "Green Machine" exploring the maze

UC Santa Barbara brought three robots to the event. "Green Machine", which was unable to compete in the Santa Barbara competition due to a fried microcontroller, was ready for the Pomona contest. It methodically searched the maze, moving smoothly from cell to cell. Green Machine passed right by the path to the center of the maze, did some more exploring, and returned to find the center in 3 minutes and 54 seconds.

"Max's Maxim"

Santa Barbara also brought "MM2K" and "Max's Maxim". Although it won the Santa Barbara contest, MM2K seemed to have technical difficulties at the Pomona competition. It was restarted several times,but the robot kept stopping in a cell adjacent to the destination cells and it wouldn't continue. Max's Maxim also made a valiant attempt at exploring the maze, but couldn't find the center.

Cal Poly Pomona's "Four-Story" mouse

Cal Poly Pomona, the host school, entered two mice into the competition. One represented the school of Engineering Technology, the other the school of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Both mice moved smoothly about the maze, but both got caught on the walls before they could reach the center of the maze.

And we all felt bad for the final team, which traveled all the way from Oklahoma to enter the contest. Their mouse did not use the traditional wing-type sensors but rather looked at the walls from the sides. Unfortunately, the maze was in a building with a large skylight overhead which flooded the room with light. This confused the mouse and despite some impromptu engineering with pizza box cardboard and duct tape, all the mouse managed to do was spin in place.

Summary: