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MicroClippers Are Micromice With Arms, Skills

Writing by Evan Ackerman on Friday, 26 of December , 2008 at 3:15 am

I can’t find too much information on these little MicroClipper robots, which is somewhat surprising, since they seem to run competitions along with the popular MicroMouse events. Clippers operate in the same mazes as the mice, except they have to deal with a bunch of randomly placed cans. Each can in the maze must be flipped, and then the robot has to get back to its starting position. So, the robots have to figure out when they’ve covered the entire maze (or flipped enough cans), and then determine the fastest way back to the starting point from wherever they flip their last can, a task made more complicated by the fact that there’s a bunch of really annoying cans in the way. Plus, when the bot flips a can, it has the ability to decide where to put it back down, and that decision could have a significant effect on how fast it can get back to the start of the maze after completing all of the flips. So many variables… It would drive me nuts, but it looks like fun.

[ MicroClippers ]

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