About a month ago, I posted about Egg-Torte, a 1/2-size Micromouse Robot built by a gentleman named Kato from Japan. Egg-Torte was fast. Really fast. But apparently there was another robot that was even faster. “Excel-Mini 2”, built by Khiew Tzong Yong of Singapore took home the prize at the 2010 Micromouse Half-Sized Robot Finals, held in Tsukuba, Japan. After all, you know what they say: when it comes to small, autonomous robots competing in a 32×32 cell grid with cell dimensions of 90x90x50mm, There Can Be Only One™
From micromouseonline.com:
The most notable feature of this maze was the long diagonal that all the fastest mice had to negotiate. Only six finalists managed a speed run. Min Tushi from Southern Taiwan University came in with an impressive 10.491 second run over the 80 cell route putting him 6 seconds ahead of his nearest rival with four more mice to run. Following Min Tushi was Kojima Thin 6 by Kozima Hirokazu who unfortunately did not manage to complete a speed run. Next up was Excel Mini 2 by Khiew Tzong Yong of the Institute of Technical Education, Singapore. To the delight of everyone except the remaining two competitors, he managed a time of 5.513 seconds. Clearly, the remaining two mice, Ng Beng Kiat’s Ning 4.1 and Kato’s EggTorte were going to have to manage something extraordinary to beat that. Alas, it proved too much for either entry. Ning 4.1 achieved second place with 6.865 seconds and EggTorte could not do better than 8.373 second for third place. So, it was Singapore with the top two places in the half-size contest and Japan down in third place. Could Japanese honour be restored in the classic contest?
At the top of this post is Khiew Tzong Yong’s winning run. Below are NgBengKiat’s and Kato’s best runs, for second and third place, respectively.