UH Manoa engineering team wins micromouse competition

Thanks to a robot micromouse named "Alfalfa," a pair of UH Mānoa engineering students took first place in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers‘ Region 6 Central Area Spring Meeting and Micromouse Competition held on March 28, 2009 at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Team members Alex Zamora and Tyson Seto-Mook built the winning micromouse, which completed the competition maze in 1:11.29, two minutes and 36 seconds ahead of another UH Mānoa entry. Of nine mice entered in the contest, UH Mānoa teams swept the top seven places in the maze competition, the top three positions in the packaging (construction and design) competition and first place in the student paper competition.

In the micromouse competition, student teams design and build an autonomous robot mouse that is controlled by a microprocessor and is no larger than 25 centimeters by 25 centimeters in size. Each mouse is given 10 minutes to learn the fastest route though the maze from the starting point to the center square.