May 5th, 2001: UC Santa Barbara

Allow me to begin by saying that this contest was set up very well. The day before the event, representatives from Santa Barbara sent out a copy of the rules to all of the contestants so that everyone had the same version thus preventing any disputes. The venue was also excellent. The engineering building at UCSB contains a nice auditorium that was perfect for the MicroMouse contest. It has stadium-style seating, several video monitors along the side walls, and a video projector capable of displaying a large image at the front of the room. By showing the maze on the large screen and on the monitors, the audience was able to sit comfortably without crowding the maze. Finally, the maze was constructed very well. All of the joints in the maze were tight without any large steps that would hinder the movement of the mice.

The contest was entered by four schools:

UC Santa Barbara's "MM2K"

UC Santa Barbara had two robots at the event, one was "MM2K" and the other was "Green Machine". MM2K is a well designed mouse that made its way around the maze and quickly found the center. Its run time ensured MM2K the 1st prize. Green Machine was unable to enter the contest due to a fried microcontroller.

Cal State Long Beach reworked the maze-solving algorithm in "Code Rage" for this event and it payed off. Code Rage, after being restarted several times, made its way to the center and was awarded 2nd place. It was the only other mouse to find the route to the destination.

Our "Dexter" never found the center of the maze but it did perform very well. It was the only mouse that did not have to be restarted during the competition. Once placed in the maze, Dexter ran the full 15 minutes without crashing into a wall. It mapped a good 80% of the maze but just couldn't find the path to the center. Because of his performance, he was awarded 3rd place.

UC Davis made the long trip to Santa Barbara to enter the competition. They entered two mice, one was "Cheez It" and the other was "Lazy". Both robots did their best and despite some furious reprogramming between runs, neither robot found the path to the center of the maze.

Summary: