Maze Solving Line Following

[tatwood]

Maze solving line following involves a line maze laid out on a regular grid, complete with false starts and dead-ends. The Chibots robot club in Chicago has made major progress in refining this competition. I'd like to open the discussion with the following question, but any relevant question is fair game for any who wish to join this thread. How is a maze solving line course laid out, what kinds of maze patterns have figured in past competitions, and are there any sure-fire best platforms/sensor combos to start with? Thanking in advance any who comment--

Tom Atwood
toma@botmag.com

[hassenplug]

One interesting thing Chibots did for the first couple events was to layout a course on a large square piece of paper. This maze had dead-ends in all four corners. There was a small circle that could be placed on the course, at the end, and the robot would start in the opposite corner.

Really, this only gave four options for different mazes, but it was an excellent idea, and very simple to implement. While the 8x8 maze is easy for us, it still requires full functionality for a robot.

Steve

[jkjellman]

At Chibots we have adapted our BLF course table (see the Basic Line Following thread for details) to also hold our Line Maze course. All that was necessary was to create starting/ending 6" circles, square corners, "T"'s and lines that end in the middle of a tile. Using these tiles combined with the straight tiles from our BLF set we can make our line maze up the day of the contest like a giant jigsaw puzzle.

There are a few things we try to do when making line maze courses. First, we try to ensure that using a left or right handed garden rule will not find the optimal solution to the maze. Second, we try and make the left handed and right handed garden rule paths be of approximately equal length. Third, we always start and end the maze in one of the four corners using a 6" diameter circle. And forth, we do not currently put and loops in the maze.

For those that done know what maze garden rules are, try watching an old episode of Batman the series (from the 60's) where he is trapped in a deadly garden maze by the Riddler.

Seriously, a left hand or right hand garden rule means that you traverse the maze with your left (or right) hand on the wall. You hand is not allowed to leave the wall so went you get to a dead end you follow it around. This will result in you testing each and every branch in the maze until you reach the finish.

Take care,
KJohn

[wrighthobbies]

I haven't tried this contest yet. I modified one of my advanced line following bots to compete in a maze contest but I broke a motor before getting it done so it has quietly retired to the scrap heap.

The most effective way to compete in a line maze contest is to learn the course. The first time through, you track your progress and memorize all the intersections (you can ignore turns, they're just like straight sections - can only go forward or backward). Once you complete the course, you now have a record of all the turns needed to go straight to the finish line.

Since I haven't competed in a maze solving contest, I'm not up on the best way to do the programming. Others should be able to shed some light on the subject.