L0cost Course for Maze Solving Robots

This is a set of instructions for building a low cost maze for testing, fun and practise the building maze solving robots.

The dimensions given here are for Micromouse but can be easily adapted for other sizes.

Actually building a competition standard maze is a significant investment in time and money and while it's not fast, this design is relatively low cost and can provide a good challenge in place of the better quality competition mazes.

It has been made to be easily portable, light and can be assembled for testing or demonstrations on tables or floors.

Also shown is a picture of a plywood based maze which was built for workshops where it might be used by enthusiastic children. If that it the intended use then I recommend that type of construction instead of this project.

5mm white foam board, larger size boards can be easier to mark out. I used A3 size boards for cost and ease

3D printed parts, printed in white

There are 5 designs of joiner used, these are the end stand, the straight stand, single corner, three way corner and the four way cross corner. Any maze design will use different amounts of each so it's recommended that a simple maze is designed and made before printing many parts that won't be used, and then printing more as a new design needs.

A basic rule is that twice as many straight joiners is required than each of corner, end or three way. The four way joiners do get used in some mazes but not many of them.

The foam needs to be cut into identical rectangles 50mm wide by 172mm long. An A3 sheet cuts into 12 pieces as shown in the diagram. This is the size for full size Micromouse. For half size Micromouse, the foam must be cut to 25mm wide by 82mm long.

Cutting out is best done on a flat board, I borrowed a fancy plastic cutting board, and used a steel ruler to mark out the pieces to cut. A very fine felt tip pen was used to mark points at the right distances to cut and then put the ruler against them to guide the knife.

A very sharp scalpel type knife was used to get clean cuts and some consideration should be made for the ability and safety of the person cutting.

A set square can also be very useful. The result is shown in the last picture, of 12 pieces and four offcuts

In designing a maze, it can be fun to mark up squared paper and design your own. This can take a while and when it doesn't work can be tedious to repeat the effort.

There are online sites that provide maze design services, here are a few. They are for non-commercial use and it's likely that while they provide a starting point, may need some changes.

Maze generator

Codebox Software

Mazes for Fun

The picture shows a small maze design , 7 x 13 points, which requires 89 wall joiners or ends and 81 walls (7 sheets of A3 card)

Once a maze design is decided upon, an area to build it must be found and also the number of each type of joining component made or found, as well as sufficient walls.

The walls slide into the joining pieces, with every wall having a piece at both ends, including the end pieces.

To help the foam walls fit, squeeze the base gently when sliding into the end pieces and then push the rest of the wall home, levelling up when completely inserted.

It's best to assemble small sections of a maze separately and then join them together into larger sections, completing the maze working out evenly from one side. Don't forget to keep a plan of your maze handy and keep referencing it as fixing a maze with the mistake in the middle can be difficult when complete.

This is a picture of just a simple track to test a maze solving robot and to also make it easy to take a picture of.