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Mouseratti (1999) by Chris Pickering. "This has run times under 5 seconds in the school's standard class. It is currently detuned for exhibition purposes but is still pretty quick!" – Duncan Louttit.

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Drive-by-Wire (1999) by John Pickering. "This is a tiny mouse that ran at the EDS show. It was good enough to scare us into some rapid development at the competition! The design is simple but certainly not crude. The "intelligence" is supplied by two microswitches. These are operated by the long, critically-shaped feeler wire via a cam. There is an additional contact made between the feeler and an adjustable wire to give zero-hysteresis switching for following the wall during a cell. The microswitches deal with the rapid turns needed at corners. The wheels are taken from a slot-car racer and are very grippy." – Duncan Louttit.

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DIM (2001) by Duncan Louttit, Swallow Systems, UK. "DIM is my first move towards a "clockwork mouse". It uses an electric motor to push it along but everything else is mechanical. The disk is the "wall sensor" and turns the steering according to the position of the wall. It is held towards the left wall by the elastic band. A piece of cotton restrains the steered wheel for full lock to the left. DIM ran at the Techno Games 2001 event. It nearly managed to get to the centre. It needed 3 touches when it got jammed. The time would have been reasonable as it was slightly faster than Drive by Wire. To get the best idea of the size of it, the battery is AAA size. The situations that cause it to jam are where there is a right turn too close to a left turn so that it does not have room to recover itself. The solution would be to make it smaller. I have other ideas for solutions involving two steered wheels but I am quite pleased that such a simple and unintelligent mouse works at all!" – Duncan Louttit.

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DOT (1999) by Duncan Louttit, Creag Louttit and Stephen Eakins, Swallow Systems, UK. "This is Swallow Systems' DOT. Somewhat quicker than a DASH, it won the wall-following competition at the Electronic Design Solutions show. It uses one of our drive trains, three Hamamatsu sensors (two area-coverage versions, one single-LED version), and an AVR 2313 processor. The motor speed setting is done with an array of trimmers and it uses a relay to reverse the right-hand motor when necessary. There is a power FET across the left-hand motor for braking. The software is very crude; all it does is read the three sensor inputs, look up which trimmers to select and whether to reverse the motor or apply a brake. There are about 30 lines of code. The limiting factor on performance is, as ever, tyre grip and braking. The system is run from 5 AAA NiCds." – Duncan Louttit.

"Dot was a Micromouse competitor. It appeared in the 2001 Techno Games where it did well and won the Gold Medal against its opponent Dim. Dot used a much smaller device to track the wall instead of the large and cumbersome flywheel of Dim and it showed during its performance by speeding across the maze, quicker than Dim. However, it was no faster than Millennium Bug due to the longer route but it performed well in good pace and managed to finish at a time of 38.15 seconds." – 2001 Techno Games.

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DASH FREE (1998) by Swallow Systems, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, UK. "DASH FREE 99 is our latest kit for making a robot to enter the schools micromouse competition. It can be used to make a reasonably fast machine to follow the standard rectangular course made from 50 mm wide white masking tape on a black background. The DASH FREE 99 kit was used by the top three in the schools' standard national competition in 1999. In the kit there is a tested assembly of two fairly powerful DC motors with worm gear drives to wheels. This assembly is ready to use and avoids the problem that some entrants will have in making gearboxes. The kit also contains two Hamamatsu S4282-51 photo-ICs. These are very clever devices that have everything needed for a modulated-light digital sensor except for an LED. The kit includes bright red LEDs to shine down on the course. The photo-ICs respond to the light reflected from the course and, when correctly set up, will give a reliable on/off signal corresponding to the light reflected from the tape or the background. These sensors are unaffected by ambient light and will even run with direct sunlight and shadow on the course." – Duncan Louttit.

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DASH 2A (1998) by Duncan Louttit, Swallow Systems, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, UK. Dash 2A competed in UK Micromouse 1998 (see video), the 1999 Micromouse National Finals, and later in the 2001 Techno Games. "There was a dash2 and a Dash one and other things. This is a mouse that uses … infrared visible sensing because it looks good on television cameras and anyway you can see if the light isn't working there's no bright red light on the walls. You can see it's got three sensors each side looking down at the walls corresponding to the right distance, too close, and too far away. Obviously it likes to stay the right distance away. The maze solving algorithm is very very crude." – Alan Dibley, UK Micromouse 1998.

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DASH 2 (1996) by Duncan Louttit, Swallow Systems, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, UK.

"DASH-2 uses two wheels in a “wheelchair” arrangement. Forwards movement is by driving both wheels forwards. It turns by driving one wheel forwards and one backwards. The wheels are mounted on shafts driven by a worm and gear arrangement from separate DC motors. The motors are driven from an H-bridge using bipolar upper elements and power FET lower elements. Both bipolars ON lets the motor free-wheel, both FETs ON gives a braking action. Each motor shaft has a disk with 8 holes in it. A LED and phototransistor work with these to give a notional shaft position. …

Another function is navigation i.e. keeping track of where the mouse is. This can cause problems in pathological cases where the mouse has a long run of continuous walls. This year's change is that there are horizontal sensors at each side to detect where side walls start and finish. Every time there is a gap on either side, DASH-2 corrects its position.

The third function is to find the centre of the maze. DASH-2 uses three weighted rules. It likes to carry straight on, it likes to get closer to the centre and it likes to boldly go where it has not gone before. These rules overlay the basic idea of not hitting walls!

The last function is to optimise the route from start to centre. This is done continuously as DASH-2 moves. By the time it reaches the centre it knows its best route, of the cells visited, for the return path.

These main functions are coordinated to follow a scheme of:- find the centre, return to the start by a good route, go back to the centre by a good route, return to the start fast, get to the middle fast. … In competition, DASH-2 performed reliably but not fast. It found the centre successfully on both runs and ran about twice as fast as DASH-1." – Duncan Louttit.

The video above is from the 1996 IEE Micromouse Contest at the University of East London.

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DASH 1 (1996) by Duncan Louttit, Swallow Systems, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, UK. DASH-1 achieved fifth place in the intermediate class at the IEE Micromouse competition. "Swallow Systems has made small commercial robots (PIP, PIXIE) for educational use since 1989. We have now started to use this technology in the IEE Micromouse Championships (DASH-1, DASH-2, DASH FREE). … The S4282-51 is a photo IC that contains nearly everything you need for a simple reflected-light sensor. All you add for the simplest sensor is an LED to provide the light. … DASH-1 uses 6 sensors. There are three horizontal long-range sensors to detect if a wall is present at each side or in front and three short-range vertical sensors to detect that the mouse is at the correct distance from that wall."

The images above were taken at the 1996 IEE Micromouse Contest at the University of East London.

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Motor Mouse (1990) by Derek Hall and Jim Chidley, UK. In 1992, "The seventh annual IEE Micromouse competition was held in London. Nine mice ran. The winner was Mitee Mouse III with the best overall score although the runner up, Mouse Mobile II by Louis Geoffrey from Canada, made the fastest run. Third prize went to Enterprise. Derek Hall’s Motor Mouse 2 managed a good best run but picked up some penalty points as did Andrew Cattell’s Mars 1." – UKMARS Micromouse History.

"Derek hall has built a number of micromouse designs. Motormouse 2 is shown here and was built in 1990. It is a rear wheel drive tricycle. The front wheel is steered by a fast (and expensive) servo of the kind used on radio control cars. A pair of DC motors drive the rear wheels. These have shaft encoders fitted for speed control and odometry. Power comes from a 7 cell NiCd pack. Processing is done by a good old Z80 with 8k RAM and a 2K EPROM. Wall sensing is through two arrays of 14 reflective pairs looking down on the walls from a wing placed well in front of the drive wheels." – Pete Harrison.

The video shows Motor Mouse 2 competing at UK Micromouse 1998.

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Maisie (1995) by Chelliah "Kanesh" Kanesalingam and Martin Smith, University of East London, Essex, UK. Maisie won at Robotix '96, Robotix '97, the IEE Micromouse World Championships in 1995, 1996 and 1997, and the Royal Holloway sponsored Championships in 2000. It also took part in the 1998 UK Micromouse competition in Manchester, and the 2001 Techno Games.

"Making a micromouse is a very tough project but one of my best students Chelliah Kanesalingam (nicknamed Kanesh) took on the challenge and helped me organize the event. He managed to design and build a mouse he called Maisie. It became the fastest university student built mouse on its first competitive event." – Martin Smith, The Micromouse contest at the RAC Headquarters.

"This mouse is driven by two stepping motors. Six down looking Infrared sensors were used to map the environment and to detect any navigation error (due to wheel slippage). Interfaces were built to aquire the sensor data, control the stepping motors, and to produce a user interface. Software was written in Forth and assembly language for the TDS2020 microcontroller." – C.Kanesalingam, Design and Development of a Micromouse.

"The maze solving algorithm is very very crude so you get a decent chance at a quick run when you actually solve the maze. However, when Maisie has solved the maze to her satisfaction and got enough information to allow her to choose the shortest route, she doesn't speed up at all [crowd laughter] she runs at exactly the same speed and this mouse is a few years old and was built as undergraduate project and has not been modified at all. But here you go, it's a mouse and it works jolly well and it's turned up to several competitions." – Alan Dibley, UK Micromouse 1998.

"Maisie was built by C. Kanesalingham from the University of East London and is a stalwart of the micromouse world. If you see a micromouse competition on TV, chances are it will be Maisie running around the maze. She is not going to set the world alight in terms of performance but she has almost absolute reliability on her side. Maisie is driven by two stepper motors in a wheelchair configuration. Taking a minimalist approach to wall sensing, there are a total of six, top-down wall sensors. These are off-the-shelf reflective sensors arranged two per wall and can be adjusted mechanically for best results. Two more sensors, in the form of microswitches, help detect collisions. An unusual feature of Maisie is the huge sealed lead acid battery perched on the back. This will add considerably to the mass and would normally be considered just too big. In a competition, Maisie just plods along and gets to the middle. That alone can be enough to win it when more sophisticated mice are getting lost or stuck." – Pete Harrison.

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Busy Lizzie (1998) by Ken Warwick, UK. Busy Lizzie took part in the 1998 UK Micromouse competition held in Manchester (see video) and the 1999 Micromouse National Finals where it came third with a time of 98.1 seconds.

"Now Busy Lizzy 4 is a tricycle Mouse using a steering wheel on the front [and] a Gantry of Light Emitting Diodes and sensors. It's going to find the middle quite quick isn't it. it's got a little flashing red light on the front and it usually means it's autofocusing. It will go faster I hope when it's decided that it's found shortest route – how long that will take I'm not sure. And now you get the idea of how a smart Mouse with a clever algorithm can explore looking for what could be better routes and yet not bother with much of the maze which is not necessarily relevant." – Alan Dibley, UK Micromouse 1998.

"Busy Lizzie is one of two micromouse designs [Busy Lizzie and Millennium Bug] built and run by Ken Warwick. Both are tricycle designs with a pair of DC motors providing motive power with a single steered front wheel. The front wheel also has an encoder attached for odometry. Sensors are top-down on a wing placed well in front of the mouse body. [The first image shows] Busy Lizzie propped up for recharging. The drive mechanism is very compact. Steering is by a modified radio control servo with the output geared up and the feedback pot replaced by an external part. Viewed from the front underside, you can see just how small the drive train is. Attached to the side of the front wheel is the encoder used for odometry." – Pete Harrison.

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Voyager (1998) by Dave Woodfield, UK. Voyager competed in the 1998 UK Micromouse competition held in Manchester (see video), and the 1999 Micromouse National Finals where it came second with a time of 37.72 seconds.

"This is Voyager. … You can see that at least when it's exploring it turns just by turning one wheel backwards one wheel forwards and it runs on a couple of sort of Sliders that stop the front and back from dragging on the ground too much. You keep hearing this 'magic expression algorithm' which is just a nice technical way of saying this is how we work out how to get to the middle of the maze. … Now this mouse I suspect will not be capable of improving its time ... because its total elapsed time penalties will be added to its score." – Alan Dibley, UK Micromouse 1998.

"Voyager is a very smart looking (and running) micromouse mouse from Dave Woodfield. His first mouse since Enterprise in 1984, Voyager is a traditional wheelchair mouse driven by stepper motors. A Dallas DS5001 processor does the work. This is a 8051 derivative with on-board, battery-backed RAM. Easy to work with and offering a relatively low component count, these are popular processors for micromouse builders. Sensing is by means of an array of top-down, reflective IR sensors. There are a lot of these and they are managed by a Xilinx Programmable Logic Array chip. In the photographs, the entire top board that you can see is dedicated to the sensor system. If you want to be able to run diagonally, with a single row of sensors, you will want a fair number of them. As yet, Voyager does not perform diagonal runs. There is still work to be done on this mouse and, while quick, it will not necessarily beat Enterprise. ... The upper board hold the sensor processing circuitry. The lower one carries the processor and the motor drivers. A total of ten NiCd cells provides plenty of voltage for the stepper motor's chopper drive circuits. Essential for high performance from stepper motors. That big chip there is a PLA, not the processor. It looks after the sensors and the motor sequencing." – Pete Harrison.

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Tenacious (2025) by ispace, Japan. The Resilience lander is due to touchdown on the moon's "Sea of Cold" on Thursday June 5, 2025. Resilience is ispace's latest lunar lander using the same design as the failed Hakuto-R Mission 1. Weighing just 5kg, the Tenacious rover has a carbon fibre-reinforced plastic frame and includes a forward-mounted high-definition camera and a small shovel to collect samples for imaging by the camera. One noteworthy feature mounted on the chassis of the rover is an artwork by Mikael Genberg called the "Moonhouse"; a tiny model of an iconic Swedish red house.

"The Moon House will be the first site-specific artwork on the Moon created at the moment the House is installed on the Moon. The moon has always stimulated man's imagination with its cold beauty. The knowledge that there is a red house with white trim in the middle of the 'magnificent desolation', as one of the first lunar travelers put it, has the potential to change the whole picture. No matter what thoughts and feelings the lunar house generates in each of us, it leaves no one untouched." – Mikael Genberg.

UPDATE: "Resilience, ispace's second lunar lander, had problems measuring its distance to the surface and could not slow its descent fast enough, the company said, adding it has not been able to communicate with Resilience after a likely hard landing." – Reuters June 6, 2025.

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Great Nauman 「Ｇｒｅａｔナウマン」 (1998) by Noriaki Yamagishi, Japan. Great Nauman came eleventh in the 19th All Japan Micromouse Competition in 1998 with a time of 32.721 seconds.

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T.N.T. (1997) by Ong Wee Keong, Nee Ann Polytechnic, Singapore. At the 18th All-Japan Micro Mouse Competition held in 1997, T.N.T. came thirteenth with a time of 21.183 seconds.

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Dendenbug №14Ⅱ 「でんでん虫№14Ⅱ」 (1997) by Seiji Notoya, Japan. At the 18th All-Japan Micro Mouse Competition held in 1997 Dendenbug came eighth with a time of 15.789 seconds.

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Mike 2000 SP (2000) by Eiichiro Morinaga, Japan. Mike 2000 came eleventh in the 21st All Japan Micromouse Competition in 2000 with a time of 1 minute 9.18 seconds. However, at the The 18th East Japan Micromouse Competition in September 2000, it came 3rd with a time of 14.717 seconds.

"To be honest, I was relieved. I chose the mouse over my family. It would have been a tragedy if the gamble hadn't come out. When I got home and showed him the trophy and told him I'd come in 3rd place, he was happy. He seemed a bit hesitant, as he'd only seen the results the day before. However, I can't fool myself. What's with this time? I'm 6 seconds behind Ito-kun, who came in 1st." – Eiichiro Morinaga