This year we are organizing a MicroMouse competition! In teams of 1 to 3 people, your goal is to build a robot that can solve a maze as fast as possible.
MicroMouse is a well-known worldwide robotics competition started in the 1970s. There are multiple events held each year in countries such as the UK or Japan, and now also at the RSA in the Netherlands! The goal of the competition is to create a fully autonomous robot that can solve a 16x16 maze in the shortest time.
We will give workshops throughout the year to help you build your robot, and work sessions where you can get help from experienced RSA members. We also provide you with basic templates that can give you a working robot, so if you have less time or experience in a certain area you can improve the template design instead of designing your robot from scratch. You can also test your robots on the practice maze whenever you want.
We do not provide you with most components (except for small components such as resistors), so your team will have to buy those. The components necessary for a good MicroMouse robot will generally cost around 60€ (though you can spend more on expensive components if you want to use those). There is a soft spending limit of 150€ per team.
At the competition day, you have 10 minutes with the maze. During this time you may attempt as many runs as you want, and the run with the shortest time from the starting square (in one of the corners of the maze) to the centre square will count. Your robot cannot have any information about the maze before your 10 minutes start, but during that time it may remember information between runs. This means that you can have some time to explore the maze, and when the robot has found the shortest path you can have many attempts to get the fastest possible time.
You are free to use the components that you want in your robot, provided that your robot meets certain rules, such as fitting within the dimensions (15cm x 15cm).
You can find the detailed rules here.
The competition is open to everyone!
You can also join the RSA to participate in our other events and workshops! Membership costs 20€ per year per person, for which you get access to all events and workshops.
Participation for non-RSA members costs 10€ per person, which gives you access to the competition and all of the workshops! The launch event and first workshop are free, so that you can see if you want to participate.
We have some workshops planned for this year so that you can learn how to build your MicroMouse robot!
There will also be a work session once a month where you can work on your robot and get help from experienced RSA members.
Dates with an asterisk (*) are not definitive yet.
MicroMouse Launch event
30th of November 2024
Discover what MicroMouse is about! This includes a mini electronics workshop, a presentation about the rules of the competition and some demos
See what sensors and components are usually in a MicroMouse robot and how they work, then choose the sensors for your robot that best suit your needs
Electronics I workshop
13th of December
PCB Design workshop
9th of January
Learn how to design a Printed Circuit Board, which will host all of your electronics and create connections between them
Learn how to use 3D modelling software to design your robot, and make some parts that you can 3d print
CAD workshop
13th of February
Electronics II workshop
17th of March
Learn how to program a microcontroller and how to work with different components, such as reading values from sensors or controlling motors
Make all the components in your MicroMouse robot work with each other, so that your robot can move through the maze!
Software workshop
1st of May*
MicroMouse internal competition
3rd of May 2025
On the 3rd of May we will hold a smaller internal MicroMouse competition, where the teams can get a feel for the competition environment. (Note that this was the original competition date, but we chose to move the competition to the back-up date)
See what algorithms you can implement to navigate through the maze optimally, and find your way to the centre as quickly as possible.
Algorithms workshop
1st of May*
MicroMouse competition
7th of June
On the 7th of June we will hold the 2025 MicroMouse competition, where you get to compete against the other RSA teams! This event will be open to the public and is for all the marbles!
We organized an internal first run of the MicroMouse competition last year!
The winning team was femtofant, with a time of 34.514 seconds.
The 2024 winning MicroMouse team (femtofant, left) with the organizing committee (HackCo, right) and the 2024 maze
If you’re interested in joining the association, you can sign-up here! Membership costs 30€ per year.