This project started when teacher Cristina Urdiales, from University's electronics department (Departamento de Tecnología Electrónica de la Universidad de Málaga) decided to replace some of our old "Promax" systems, from the digital systems lab (Laboratorio de Sistemas Digitales), buying some new microrobots instead.

Then, some microbots from Microbótica, S.L. (www.microbotica.es) were put at our disposal. These robots were based on a Lego structure, two small engines, both a controller and an interface boards, and Motorola's 68HC11 microcontroller as central unit. Besides, the small robots had two infrared sensors.

With all this, we formed different groups of students, with a common goal: build a "maze-solving" robot for an indoor competition, so that we could give marks according to time-to-solve results.

Our group was composed by:
(left to right in the picture)

Andrés Álvarez Muñiz
Carlos García Argos
Luis F. Gimilio Barboza

Our strategy to get out of the labyrinth was chosen by trying to optimize all we knew about the maze's structure. For instance, we agreed that every microbot could make a pre-run in the maze, so we took advantage programming ours to memorize all the possible ways to the exit. This way, when the race begins, the exact path leading to the exit would be stored in the robot's memory.

This implementation results in a safe exit from the maze, quite fast (you erase all wrong ways while you're learning), and inexpensive too! (we only needed two extra sensors). And as our specifications involved a reduced-in-size maze, we didn't have to design any simplification algorythm for the robot, which would have required a much more complex software, along with additional memory chips, and with no guarantees of a faster exit.

Robot, new batteries, black tape, wire, more wire...

...and once this introduction is done, it's time to follow with the design process!