Micro-Mouse Big Cheese in Maze Circles

Some engineering students at UCI Irvine have no qualms about putting a mouse through tortuous exercises just to get him to run a maze successfully.

Yukon Bob, as his creators affectionately call him, is a micro-mouse, a tiny, two-pound robot that uses infrared sensors and a minicomputer to propel its way through obstacle courses. It looks more like the inside of a radio on rollers than a mouse, but students attached paper ears, whiskers, nose and tail.

Bob is the result of three years’ effort by senior Dave Hirayama, whose work paid off recently when the micromouse was the only robot to find the center of a 10-foot maze during a nationwide micromouse maze marathon in Atlantic City.

About 60 teams signed up for the race, but only UCI, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (which had two entrants) and Cal State Los Angeles entered working mice in the March contest. Yukon Bob made its way through the maze in 36.5 seconds, leaving the other mice in the dust.

3 Years of Trial Mice

Hirayama built the robot with senior Henry Tominaga last fall, although he said it took him three years of trial mice to perfect Yukon Bob’s design. “We’ve learned from our mistakes with previous robots to come up with a winner,” Hirayama said.

Assisting Hirayama and Tominaga were students Urs Mader, David Rodriguez, Mary Hardy and Rich Carmona. Behnam Bavarian, assistant professor of electrical engineering, advised them.

The students ruthlessly ran Bob through test after test, training it as they would an athlete preparing for the Olympics. “There were so many little things you had to pay attention to and correct,” Hirayama said.

Money for the project came from the Orange County chapter of the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers and the UCI electrical engineering department.