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Video: LVBots August 2014 looped maze solving competition

Posted by Ryan on 19 August 2014
Tags: lvbots

LVBots held a looped maze solving competition at Pololu on August 7th. It worked a lot like the maze solving competition we held in May, except we advanced to a maze that had loops. Adding loops might not seem like much, but it makes solving mazes fundamentally more challenging. Instead of being able to follow a simple strategy like always turning left, the robots need to keep track of where they are in the maze in order to find an efficient path through it. The video shows the robot runs superimposed, making them easy to compare.

Robots based on the 3pi once again dominated. Ben’s 3pi: Ghost has an especially fun provenance: it is serial number 0J17, which is a very early production unit that David gave to Kevin for his birthday back before Kevin worked at Pololu. Ben’s ridiculously optimized/calibrated code from many years ago somehow worked only on our earliest 3pis, which had motor brackets that we painstakingly injection molded by hand and 3D printed wheels and ball casters. Now that he has kids, Ben doesn’t have as much time for hours of fine tuning, so his era of dominance will likely come to an end as soon as he runs out of access to ancient 3pis.

Are you in the Las Vegas area? Check out the LVBots Meetup page to get involved.

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