User:Surojit Guha/Micromouse Algorithms

Introduction
The Micromouse competition is an annual contest hosted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). A small autonomous mobile robot called a micromouse, must navigate through an unknown maze and locate the center. The robot that makes the fastest time run from the start to the center of the maze is declared the winner of the competition.

The maze is made up of a 16 by 16 grid of cells, each 180 mm square with walls 50mm high. The mice are completely autonomous robots that must find their way from a predetermined starting position to the central area of the maze unaided. The mouse will need to keep track of where it is, discover walls as it explores, map out the maze and detect when it has reached the goal. Having reached the goal, the mouse will typically perform additional searches of the maze until it has found an optimal route from the start to the center. Once the optimal route has been found, the mouse will run that route in the shortest possible time.

One of the most important areas of robot, “Decision making Algorithm” or in lay-man’s language, “Robot Intelligence”.For starting in the field of micro-mouse it is very difficult to begin with highly sophisticated algorithms. This paper begins with very basic wall follower logic to solve the maze. And gradually improves the algorithm to accurately solve the maze in shortest time with some more intelligence. The Algorithm is developed up to some sophisticated level as Flood-Fill algorithm.

The Wall Follower
The wall following algorithm is the simplest of the maze solving techniques. Basically, the mouse follows either the left or the right wall as a guide around the maze.