Examples

Protocol tester in Python

The Micromouse Maze Simulator project includes an example to test the communication protocol. Only the code required for the client requests is implemented, with no actual mouse search logic.

The standalone tester example can be found as a script in the project.

Simple solver in Python

The Micromouse Maze Simulator project includes a fully working solver example implemented in Python. This client implements a robot that is able to explore the maze (i.e.: read and update walls, move…) while making decisions on which move to make on each step.

The decision making is very simple:

• Each time the robot passes through a cell, it increments its associated weight by 1.
• It then looks around to see the possible moves it can make (i.e.: having a wall will prevent a movement in that direction).
• Among the possible moves, it will look at the weights of the next possible cells and select the lowest weight.
• It will move to the cell that has the lowest weight.

The standalone simple solver example can be found as a script in the project.

Note

There is a lot of code just to implement maze storage, adding walls, client-server communication… The decision making and the actual search algorithm is implemented in the last functions. In particular, the run_search(), best_step() and recalculate_weights() functions.

Some functions start with an underscore. Those, you probably do not need to edit them nor directly call them from your client.

Using this client template you may try your own search algorithms. For example, if you want to try a left-wall follower robot, simply change the best_step() function to:

def best_step():
    prefer = ['left', 'front', 'right', 'back']
    allowed_steps = [step for step in prefer if is_allowed_step(step)]
    return allowed_steps[0]

Although this search algorithm will fail to reach the goal in many cases.

A real micromouse client in C

A real, complete micromouse client implemented in C can be found in the Bulebule micromouse project. This client executes the search algorithm that effectively runs in the Bulebule micromouse robot, implementing only the required functions to communicate with the Micromouse Maze Simulation server.

To try that client you need to first download the Bulebule repository:

git clone https://github.com/Theseus/bulebule.git

Then change to the scripts/ directory and compile the client:

cd bulebule/scripts/
make

Note

You need to have ZMQ libraries installed in your system in order to compile the project.

Now simply run the client while the Micromouse Maze Simulator is running!