The section about the mouse choosing the longer but straighter path really struck home with me. Too often in map software, and even games with a GPS system, the "shorter" path will be taken, even though the longer path is actually faster when factoring in deceleration, waiting at stop signs, etc. It's really a fascinating area for optimization.
when it comes to people and autos in cities, the straightest path is usually better. displacing a block for a better street can improve, the issue is top speeds are limited. it is fun to optimize
Totally agree. The 'trick' seems to be able to assign the correct speed/ acceleration times. Doing a 'flood fill' to find the route is one thing, but doing a second form of 'flood fill' where you label each position with an estimated time-to-goal sort of distance.
@@victormiranda9163 And we've all been there where we think, "I need to turn left at some point, which intersection would be the best place? At the light where there is a left-turn signal? Or maybe one block BEFORE the light where I won't be stopped by the light but maybe there will be a gap caused by the light where I can turn left even quicker?" Or do I just make three right turns? lol City driving, you quickly find yourself thinking about things like this and trying to remember what works.
Sure the mice are cool, but can we talk about the animations at 8:40? So impressive! No idea how they were made, but it really helped understand the concepts. Hats off to the team behind them.
Probably this might get lost in the sea of comments, but I just want to say that this video made me choose my first club at my university. We have an IEEE club, and it has a micromouse year-long project. I was so thrilled when I first heard about it. I am a CS major, but I've dabbled a little in electronics. I am exited about how it is going to go for me.
Lol it went better than I was expecting this first term, but I didn't win. I wasn't last either though. There are three more terms to go. Although, I kind of dislike the software we're using. Bad and glitchy interface for the EDA part. The coding software lacks modern features such as multi line editing, static analysis, code suggestions and snippets, and has a dated UI. For the EDA software I can only compare it to my experience using programming software since I don't know much about EDA software. Is it all so bad? The one we're using is Fusion 360. I'm honestly astonished it is paid software. Thankfully we're on a free student license though.
One thing I like about this engineering competition is that, since there aren't heavy financial incentives involved (like pretty much any other engineering project), people are given the chance to try whatever they want and be as innovative as they like.
Even with incentives, all they would need to be innovative is low costs for parts and work, and rules allowing multiple entries per participant (and no entry-fee)
@@raymondqiu8202 You don't understand the way capitalism does innovation. If there is big money riding on something, the capitalists will do quite well at figuring out how to get that money. It is only once they dominate a field, and risk becomes expensive, that they stop innovating.
As an electronics engineer this was one of my favorite projects that I have ever done. From the firmware, circuit design , algorithms and mechanical design every part of this robot is just pure absolute joy of engineering.
I wonder how common extreme weight optimization is... Drilling holes into PCBs, using the lightest materials available, shaving them down to barely not break. Surely that could get you a few ms due to faster turning speeds. Also, how relevant are aerodynamics on this tiny scale?
Man, this is fascinating. Initially I thought this was a remote controlled competition, but after seeing how fast they were moving I knew that wasn't possible. It's really impressive what we can do with robotics these days, even on such a small scale!
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If you remote controller is a computer, it would be possible to go arbitrarily fast with remote control.
So am I, I saw the length of this video and thought: "Eh not gonna sit and watch for 20 mins" but I got absolutely enthralled. Really considering making one!
When the guy you were interviewing said "you come along one day, you see everything and you go "huh. that doesn't look to hard, i could do that,' but then you find yourself sucked into a deep and rewarding hobby" i felt that in my bones. I got into rc planes much the same way. Honestly watching this micromouse thing made me think the same thing like huh i bet i could make a mouse..
you are right, i felt his words too! i have a similar story; ive watched a lot of rc planes but it looked so damn hard and the cost involved is toooo high so i never ventured into it. however when I had the chance to attend a uni technofest where I saw contestants competing with their soccer cars, it clicked - this doesnt seem too hard! And thats how i got into making my first rc soccer car using arduino uno. now this mouse vid makes me think, how to even start coding such a thing!?
This is how I got into slot car racing. Just go along, enjoy the weekly racing... go to a national race competition, finish in the bottom 10%, get the bug more... a few years later, routinely entering 6 and 12 hour races with an annual 24 hour (as a team, not just myself o_o) Still want to get into RC aircraft, but £££ of course. And I want to try the fan concept from micromouse in a slot car first, to see if it even works with our tracks (wooden tracks with a routed slot are often smooth, but the majority of my races are on plastic track that has imperfections... the smooth plastic sheet from the downforce demo in this video would be a dream to race on!)
Yeah but like rc planes, you really have to derive your own joy from it. Maybe it's different where you live, but people are kinda a-holes about the rc aircraft hobby. They either don't want it around, or they've forgotten more than you'll ever know. Maybe it's like that with everything.
As one of those who missed the podium of the All-Japan Competition this year, I can tell you that the level at which they are competing for the champion is on a completely different level. one of them mentioned that he changed the optical rotary encoder disc from plastic to paper, making it 0.15g lighter!
So they have already swapped steel to carbon fiber screws or axles or straight to adhesives to save weight? Biggest issue i see with these advances seem to be that its money game to manufacture lightest parts witch require high quality tooling to produce well as having already wealth of knowledge on the robotics. Sure i can plan maybe even lighter mouse with things mentioned, but i'm decades behind on building the software to level where i could even compete.
Wow, this brings back memories. As a student, I helped the IEEE bring the first Micromouse competition to Australia in 1988. Our team (Macquarie University) didn't win that year, but did the next and went to Singapore to represent Australia. I remember we had to use tape differently. We had developed our mouse on a practice maze where the surface had become slippery over time. When we went to the competition maze, which was new, the wheels gripped a lot more than we were used to - so we wrapped tape around the wheels to reduce grip and match actual performance to the motion model the mouse was using. We all learnt a lot about robotics and real-time coding. It was a fantastic tool. (I still have all the photos somewhere...)
thank you for sharing your story! This video was the first time I ever heard about Micomouse! I instantly fell in love with the whole thing! how wonderful and exciting these little machines are! Quite impressive evolution of hardware to continuously push the limits of the game or competition! its so smooth and exhilarating :)
As someone who has participated in robotics competitions, it's so emotional, it's like horse racing, but you have spent months building the horse with everything you have. Just being there with all these people, seeing their genius solutions to the problem, it's so much fun. I would truly recommend it to anyone
@@yune1000 absolutely, I was in highschool, so I had no degree at all. I think you can learn most of what you need on TH-cam. Soldering would be a good skill and some basic knowledge of how coding works. Everything else will come with time and practice
My respect to all the previous engineers of the past whose mouse was really slow, their consistency to push this competition further paved the way for today's modern engineers. This is one of the prime examples of what humanity can achieve while working together generation by generation.
@@muddypawswanderlust It's part of my humanity to claw my way out of eating nothing but scraps, and onwards into engineering. Saying that feats of science is a waste invalidates people who actually escaped the poverty line through science. It's like telling me that I need to go back down there just because I'm able to feed me and my family now. Instead of being derogatory to science, why don't you just inspire people to aim for this knowledge so they too escape like I did. People inspired me to climb, and so can you.
@@muddypawswanderlust I'm sure you spend every second of your life dedicated to making the world a better place and never waste time on any kind of entertainment and you only spend enough money to survive while donating the rest to charity.
In 1980 I was 15, bought my first electronics magazine. It had a micromouse article, that inspired me to get into computers. At 58, I'm a software developer for my own business.
am i the only one who had a big wide smile throughout the whole video? i am just amazed and fascinated by simplicity of task but the ferocious ingenuity of the competitors. just loved it
I kinda wish he'd segued into robot-sumo. The robots and many of the strategies are similar, but they need to tackle a dynamic problem (push the other robot out of the ring) rather than a static one (navigate an unchanging maze).
Be that as it may, those are some shockingly weak mazes with **many** paths to success. Lets get some AI generated mazes in there where excessive diagonals are not included...
Not really. Keep in mind that the microcontrollers in those robots can do hundreds of millions of computations per second. If any uses an FPGA instead, that could be an even bigger number. From the robots' perspective, it must "feel" like driving at 0.01 mile per hour.
@@TheNefastor it’s just incredible to watch something so small maintain such precise control from the perspective of someone who has very little experience in robotics.
@@TheNefastor using FPGA's was also my first thought in reducing the computation times dramatically. I don't think that any of the winning mices are using a microcontroller.
@@Craftlngo I wouldn't know, but don't underestimate MCU's. The fastest STM32 runs at 550 MHz last I checked, that's plenty enough to run this kind of challenge.
@@TheNefastor How about the momentum, power cut-off, and wheel friction, do they calculate all of them as well? I wonder if let's say the sensor and computer can decide the next step fast enough, will the output of the movement be straightforward?
Woah! When I saw this video was posted, I walked straight out of my office 30ft to tell Dave Otten (from the video) that it was posted. He was quite excited!
20:20 Imagine a giant cylindrical maze where the mice can go upside down. Or even a maze with loops like in Sonic, so the mice will have to account for more than a 2D map of the area.
I’m thinking 3D mazes in water or air mazes. But, surely, one can complicate it even more, adding rare shapes to it or even simulating 4 dimensions, building a tesseract.
This video was a roller coaster: First stunned because I thought they have to solve the maze in their first run, then disappointed because they didn't, then amazed again about the speed of these things and the engineering done to achieve that
Gotta say my thanks as this video helped me create a first person maze game based on the maze circuit designs on the video for a university project and the panel/judge loved it with the addition of a horror theme through sounds, lighting, and objects in the distance. It was also interesting to learn about the micromouse competition while I was at it and I was able to replicate the diagonal movements the micromouse make on the mazes on my game. Thank you again.
I love that they are allowed to experiment and add new hardware to the mouse; it will be great to check back in on these competitions in a few years time and see what innovations they have come up with
I think this is crucial to the event's longevity. "Solved" competitions are only solved when there is no more room to iterate within the ruleset, so flexible rules are the best way to foster innovation.
It will be embedded with the brain of a 13 year old high school sprinter with angst issues, forced to run the race for eternity to save humanity from the rat race.
I love that Red Comet got there faster than the other mouse by actually doing what racing drivers do and taking the *racing line* to the goal, ie. maximising top speed through the straights and minimising speed loss by taking fewer turns. Brilliant. The fact that that consideration doesn't seem to have occurred to any of the other competitors before then tells you something quite deep about knowledge: you don't know what you don't know. There will always be 'unknown unknowns'. Saying 'we've reached our limit, we've solved all the problems there are in this subject' is a failure of imagination.
@@FancyUnicorn Racing "line" is important because the track width is usually 2x - 5x the width of the car. The most efficient use of available grip comes from maximizing the radius of each turn (although there are exceptions) by moving across the track. For instance, the "racing line" entering a left 90-degree corner would have the driver start on the right side of the track approaching the corner, move to the left during the turn while striking the inside left apex, and end up back on the right side of the track on corner exit. This "line" maximizes the turning radius, and is much faster than staying on the left side of the track for the entire turn.
The Micromouse that won by finding the faster, not shorter route being named "Red Comet" is a cute touch. In Japan, there's a famous series of giant-robot anime called "Gundam", and one of the main bad guys from the original series is named Char (he's an ultra famous character that inspired legions of imitators). Char pilots a "Zaku II", which is normally a mass-produced giant-robot, but his has been customized heavily and painted red. They say his custom Zaku goes three times faster, earning him the nickname of Red Comet. It'd be surprised if that reference wasn't on purpose!
The really interesting part of this for me, as a motorsports fan, is the fact that so much of the innovation has followed a similar path to motorsports. The famous Brabham BT46 "fan car" was a F1 car that had a fan attached which sucked it down to the ground, providing greater downforce and cornering. It debuted in 1978 and was banned after a single race (which it won).
I was thinking about this exact thing. I like how micro mouse doesn’t change the rules when a certain change becomes commonplace or too dominant unlike in Motorsport. There’s always room for innovation.
@@tthurlow thats not really the issue that keeps motor sports from doing crazy stuff like they will try in this competition. While yes innovation in motor sports is expensive, we've seen over the decades the insane amount of money companies will spend to innovate to win a race. The issue with motor sports is the fleshy meat bag operating the vehicle. If a little mighty mouse robot runs into a wall at 50 mph, catches fire and goes pop, it's kind of funny and everyone might be out some money. If an f-1 car goes airborne doing 250 mph into the bleachers because Mercedes was allowed to do whatever, you could easily see a large amount of human casualties. A great example is the old group B rally circuit where there where minimal rules for the manufacturers. It got wild, the cars where insane, tons of innovation and lots of death and injury for the short time it existed.
And they need to make the problem more complicated again - like adding in the free-standing walls. How about some curved walls, or pegboard holes in the floor, or rough surfaces, or transparent walls, or curtained-off short-cuts?
Wow, I'm almost 40 and I remember competing in this kind of competition back when I was 15 and studying for my IT GCSE. I remember spending hours tweaking the motor commands to the main 2 wheels to be able to take corners as quickly as possible and very crude attempts at a maze searching algorithm - I think I made some terrible combination of trial and error and "always keep your hand on the left wall". One of my best memories of that class :)
This flood fill optimization algorithm is only suitable when you can safely assume you know the general direction of where the end goal is. In the case of the micromouse competition, the goal seems to always be the center of the maze, so the solution is to march towards the center and find the path of "max descent" toward that center.
Pretty impressive. Going from "this is boring" to "I bet I will be the one who come up with the next big innovation on this great sport" in less than 25 minutes.
Im a motorsport enthusiast and got really excited when they announced Roborace. Sadly it never caught on and became a joke before disappearing. Seeing those robot mices racing in those mazes really is awesome and I'd happily watch an AI race with full size cars and tracks.
@@DizzyDisco93 yeah and since there wouldn't be no human inside the vehicle, safety would be limited to spectators and we could have super light and fast cars !
In all actuality you'd watch it once and probably never again because it would be incredibly boring. At top tier racing, once all the cars are the same from hitting the limit of technology and/or budget, the only real dynamic factor is the human component.
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@@zwan1886 there's always a human component, and already today the bigger factor in most racing events today is more the human engineer rather than the human driver imho.
@ Then you don't know much about racing because they put caps on what is allowed, and when there aren't the races are won by whichever organization has more dollars, so it's just pay to win which doesn't make for an exciting spectator sport either.
Calling that mouse “Red Comet” is such a great touch. It’s a reference to the nickname to a mobile suit pilot who was 3x as fast as the others in Gundam!
Along similar lines, the original competition LeMouse 5000 refers to the french 24h endurance car race at Le Mans (as the french use "souris" not "mouse" for computer & other mice).
The story telling on this video feels great! I have been following this channel for many years now. But how captivating the videos are still keeps increasing. I just watched 25 minutes about little mouse-like maze-solving robots, but it felt like 5 minutes.
Some History: The first Micro Mouse competition was won by former colleagues of mine at Battelle NW in Washington State. They had a 3-step algorithm - 1) Random Walk through the maze, 2) Explore every square (and walls) not encountered during the first run, 3) Compute and drive the shortest (distance) path. Of course the early mazes were much smaller, and they were also less complex so that a mouse with no smarts could execute the wall following algorithm. The fastest (time) mouse the first year used that technique. The microprocessor they built was from what Intel called "Floor Sweepings" - fully functional, but cosmetically defective chips. These incredibly talented engineers were the first in our department to put together an embedded system as I remember. It was a FANTASTIC place to work full of innovative and amazingly personable people. Best job I ever had! Our group's claim to fame 5 years later was to create the world's first self-contained Rubik's Cube solving robot. Just like the first Micro Mouse, Cubot's time of 2:40 has been eclipsed many times over. Still...there's a nostalgic feeling that grabs me every time I see one of these mouse competitions...
@@forthebirds4 what he probably meant was that since he has witnessed all that, he might have been a young engineer then, so definitely he may be old, there is nothing disrespecting in asking if someone is old or not, did he de mean him ? What's your issue, what's hurting you so much, calm down bro, with that attitude you are going nowhere....
I did this as part of my electronics university course and it was a lot of fun! Didn't end up with anything groundbreaking, but it's great to go through every stage of design and prototyping and create something that actually solves a practical problem, even if it's a small one.
I did the micromouse challenge 20y ago on robotics class at university. This was a good trip to memory lane but also amazing to see the current level of all participants! Truly outstanding!
It's a little mind blowing. I still see optimization I is there because the mice are not taking advantage of racing lines as much as they could. It is Incredible what these little robots can do.
@Martineski Racing lines are the theoretical line around the corner that maintains the highest average speed and least amount of time. This is where you hear things like, hitting the apex, where you go from out wide into the inside edge to take the widest turn you can without traveling excess distance. These mice seem to be taking mostly straight lines equidistant from the walls to avoid crashing into them, diagonals excepted. To optimize, the mice would need to hug an outside wall, than turn in a bit early to just kiss the inside wall, then barely miss the next outside wall.
Cannot believe i watched an entire documentary about small little robots having the same g force as formula 1 cars and going so fast you can barely see it, Loved it.
I don't think people understand how big this event is in Japan. I was teaching robotics in Japan and a student said that I should come to this club and check it out. It was the Micromouse club I I was shocked at how awesome their hardware and software was. I had to take a serious look at my viewpoints on robotics after seeing this subculture.
but why do girls somehow get weirded out when I wink and tell them I can show them my micromouse in my bedroom? are they not into robotics as much as I thought?
@@taoarg9000 one time I said I could ask my bros to bring some big ones over and we could try them together then she just left. haven't seen her since.
I was in the 1990 UNSW Micro-mouse team in Australia. The previous team had just transitioned from stepper motors to DC motors. The high speed DC motors caused frequent wheel slippage making positional calculations difficult. There were a lot of challenging problems to solve but it was really fun. It's good to see so much progress since then.
This is such a testament to engineering. I'm always impressed how generationally, or year to year, engineering evolves in complexity to become more and more precise and innovative far exceeding what the original concepts could have ever predicted.
The "Strategy" illustrations of how the mouse could reach its goal are fantastic. And all the explanations from the narrator, start to finish, are also excellent and easy to follow. Fascinating video.
Sometimes you come across a thing you've never heard off, and it opens up a whole world for you. I never heard of this, but it seems to be a longstanding scene of people exited and engaged in a very specific hobby going on for half a century. People are awesome.
When I first saw the footage I wonder where they were getting that much traction from and my assumption was magnets (and the maze was built on a metal plate) but doing it with a fan is a far cooler solution to that problem. Self contained as well.
And what is so cool is that as long as you stay in the general rules that keeps the spirit intact, no one will tell you "no you can't use that it's too good"
F1 teams were experimenting with that technology in the 70s (as far as I remember), but such fans were prohibited by the technical rules after only one season as fan failures in turns or cars hopping over curbs was devastating and even fatal.
When you think about it, it is actually quite obvious to every car geek. There have been tons of ground effect cars, including the chapparal 2j (with a fan), or in formula 1 the lotus 78/79 (with skirts), or the Brabham (with a fan, but different), etc. So IMHO, yes, surprising, but also obvious at the same time 😂
This videos was absolutely stunning. You took a sport nobody knew about and turned it into an amazing video. I also wouldn’t of understood a thing without those visuals. Hats off to the team.
They should have an ESPN alternative channel, with all these more special competitions. This, wife carrying, speed lumber jacking, eating competitions, pumpkin throwing, dodgeball.
Whoever does the animations to accompany the explanations for these videos deserves a raise! Those were top notch and absolutely vital to the effectiveness of this video!
It'd be interesting to add some curved sections to the maze and see how that affects the routing algorithms. It looks like the mice can already handle them mechanically.
CURVES SECTIONS?!? Something tells me that could either make or break the algorithms. Think about the flash fill method... they use a grid to map the maze. Now how would that grid work with a curved section?!?
I just spent 25 minutes engrossed in a video about tiny robots trying to solve something you find in the Sunday paper. This channel continues to amaze.
Delighted to see Micromouse getting featured on Veritasium. High time the competition gets its due! Almost all of my engineering years back in early 2000s were spent in solving this extremely hard problem. There were no AI Copilots, and Arduino wasn't even conceived back then. Fun times!
Same here in 2000s I joined my college team regional Robotics competition several times. After I graduate I saw my junior using Arduino, I was like holyseez it is way easier now. Working on algorithms and software is fun, but hardware always annoying, there's always something wrong. These days you can simply just buy the kit, bought one for my nephew's birthday.
@@RessG I do miss the hardware challenges though - being able to buy everything is great for learning just the software part. But in my view, true skill remains in trying to work with very little pre-fab stuff. The marriage of hardware and software is true engineering!
@@iPrint3D I follow lots of channels. This one still has my attention after all these years. One thing you'll note is he does not show himself all the time on the camera. He does not appear that often, its mostly his voice.
Unbelievable that this is a Veritasium video. No condescending attitude, no gimmick, no clickbait. Wow. Awesome Ve, love this format, please release more like this!
I love these kinds of things. It feels like you met someone 10 years ago and thought their hobby was kinda interesting. Then you come back and they have taken it 1000x further than you could even conceive of 😂😂😂
Hats off to all the dedicated builders. The progress improved with various tricks: Infrared sensors, using diagonals, optimized algorithms, gyroscopes and even fans. Some might think this is irrelevant for everyday life but it's not. Fields like robotics and machine learning started as fun but shape our whole community and became indispensable.
But why there are no curves and roundabouts in the maze? Weird and sad. No bridges, no tunnels, no underpasses, no overpasses? Sad and weird it is to see a sterile maze.
As a computer scientist strongly interested in robotics, it always amazes me the different levels of optimization these teams employ in their robots. Just amazing.
if there's one thing I've learned in my years on the internet, it's to never underestimate the lengths people will go to to win a niche competition over something largely unimportant to almost everyone else in the world. Given adequate time for the competition to grow fierce, of course.
As an F1 fan, I got extra excited once I saw the tape cleaning the tires. The way they interact with the track surface in various disciplines (shown very well here!) is fascinating.
Formula One: **Bans cool, wacky, and clever ideas, including active-suction designs.** Micromouse: **Remains cool and relevant by welcoming innovation of all kinds.**
@@needthistoolthat's to be expected, though. Many of the cool ideas were 2 steps away from catastrophic incidents (ground effect is one such example: it will stick you to the corner untill it doesn't, then you'll be so much over the limit of normal grip that nothing you do will influence the car; and this could happen by chance if even a little bit of air gets in. Nowadays it's not a problem anymore, but the same applies to many other innovations. They could have left in asymmetric brakes tho)
If you combine maze-solving with "battle-bots", the introduction of multiple bots into the maze trying both to reach the end first, and to destroy their opponents would be very interesting!
It's amazing to think about how intelligent systems can approach a structure like a maze. While watching this, I started thinking about how I approach maze like structures in games like Skyrim or Doom. I think most gamers probably have a strong intuition for maze navigation, but have no idea of what that strategy is in logical terms.
Best maze tip almost everyone who solves mazes knows, stick to the right wall unless you loop yourself. Some mazes do that and I hate them. It's very nasty how some of them are so complicated and always just loop after you explore such a deep branch that you have to return because it was one way.
I wish competitions like this were big in the US as an educational circuit with different divisions for middle school, high school, and college. There isn't really the massive hurdle of cost and equipment required next to most other competitive events/sports, but there's room to learn so much about all the different disciplines involved. I've helped teach some basic programming and embedded systems lessons at my old rural high school when a teacher of mine asked me to come in for her class, but she was the last teacher left that would even think about interesting academic adventures for the students. A cool result of those lessons was that she went on to really get into robotics and the next school she went actually allowed a robotics club, and they competed in all kinds of stuff at a national level.
Have a look into FIRST robotics competitions! theres multiple different tiers for elementary, middleschool, and highschool with nearly a hundred thousand various teams in the US alone, and hundreds more across the entire world! I took part in highschool myself and its exactly what you're wanting here!
I mourn not having this in highschool. It's the sort of thing with an insane breadth of learning potential, coding, robotics, engineering, physics, etc. But most importantly it is interesting, competitive, collaborative and iterative. Competition and technological advancement will inherently drive kids to learn, teach, collaborate and improve.
Fan cars have existed as a concept since the 80s. The first was Brabham in F1 that won its first Grand Prix and then the concept was immediately banned from all motorsport. It pulled a low pressure area underneath the car sealed by skirts via a massive fan at the back. It was ostensibly for engine cooling. It’s seen a revival recently with the McMurtry Speirling which is a tiny super powerful electric road car that can generate 10000N of downforce at standstill.
I was dying imagining how it worked at the start. And then you came with the most freakish didactic and animation that blow my mind. Congratulations, this channel is crazy awesome
My favorite teacher of all time was my 11th grade math teacher, Mr. Hartle. I once asked him why we need to learn algebra, geometry and so on and his answer surprised me (but makes perfect sense). He said, "Most people will rarely need to use any of those in their daily lives, but what's great about learning math is that it helps you learn how to solve problems in general, which most people WILL use on a regular basis." I think that axiom applies to micromouse competitions: It teaches you how to problem solve and innovate.
Body builders are not learning how to lift weights but to build muscle mass. Math in the same way increase overall intelligence, especially the younger you start it. Obviously also help with solving problems in general, though closely related to overall intelligence they are still different things. Math is amazing, even though I think right side of the brain is capable of even higher level of intelligence and while we should learn math, we should not ignore things like intuition etc.
@@juzujuzu4555the two types of thinking are complementary though, it's better to give attention to both. I recommend the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman that goes into this.
Sorry bro, but this kind of thing is so far away from introductory, introductory robotics are like: open and closing a gate, or lifting up some wheight with a motor. Actually doing robots its on the midterm of robotics, and competitions like this are endgame things.( Sorry for the possible typing errors)
@@klenom112 I think he meant it in the way of being introduced to the potential of robotics during introductory courses. Show students the possibilities, let them imagine the what ifs, and then the basics begin.
Its actually really not that far out there to use this as introductory robotics, even in a practical sense! Before I went off to college, I participated in a highschool robotics competition that McGill University hosts, which does exactly this. All the equipment is standardized with a few customization options, and over the course of a couple days they introduce the different features and how to write code on the arduinos that drive the little mice, and then you have a sandbox day to try different things with different mazes before you submit your final version for the contest. They use very simple mazes, and you have very few options for sensors, but in my opinion it was the perfect level of challenge!
In my university it's a class they teach you to code and then at the end you build a micro mouse or a robot that does something like following a path then lifting a can or moving some servos to carry stuff. This class is on the camputer/electrical engineering idk if there is something similar on computer science since they only do coding and stuff while we do hardware and some coding.
One of my professors once told how he took part in these competitions when he was a student. They won like 5 years in a row in the 80's! Until, I think in Japan, the maze materials were changed so they reflect UV instead of IR light 😂 (or the other way around) and somehow everyone forgot to mention this little fact to one team, and one team only 🤔 but the multiple aspects combined in these competitions, and the memories of an old nerd, made it super interesting to listen to!
I have never heard that story before, and I've spent hours talking to Dave Otten and other 'veterans'. What is the name your professor, and university when he competed?
I never knew I needed micro mouse in my life. What a fascinating competition! Very cool seeing all the disciplines coming together for something so novel and fun
I think it would be really cool if the next step was to add a vertical component to the maze, with hills, possibly different levels where the end could be anywhere. It would be real cool to see the AI have to solve how to control acceleration for uphill climbs and slow down enough not to go flying off at the top.
maybe even some trap doors and elevators so mouse has to learn what will take it to which level, and figure out at what level are they at any moment. Also make it more like pacman, add a robotic cat, trying to catch it and eat it? Finally instead of having all of them do separate runs, add them all at once, make it a crush derby, arm the mice with chainsaws and watch it become REALLY popular.
It would seem that eventually going 3D is inevitable. The micro mouse capabilities will eventually outperform the single ground level maze. Providing second and third levels with ramps would increase the difficulty level tremendously.
after reading the first two sentences of your comment i thought of the mice having to ride walls with centrifugal force and the finish could be anywhere not just on the ground. multiple floors might be more reasonable though 😅
I think adding rewards in random places of the maze would come first. Then they could create a category where the score would be measured as rewards/time.
But then creating such a maze could probably come with a greater cost resulting in a greater registration fee resulting in only the rich being able to take part in such contests.
This actually helps a lot if applied to food delivery, not even kidding. The shortest route is not always the fastest route. So I never even realized I was playing this game the entire last year, lol.
I got SO excited when you got to the part about turning forces, and I guessed right before you said it that they were creating vacuums to hold the mouse. I’m not usually a very mechanically minded person, and it was really a joy to have an AHA! moment organically like that. I am so appreciative of the ways that you can share other’s passion in such effective ways. I didn’t know or care about robotics in the slightest before this video, but now I’m excited to see what the future holds for micromouse optimization.
I thought the same thing at that part. Only because there's an electric race car called the McMurtry Speirling that utilizes an underside fan to generate massive downforce. The thing is insane.
Optimization has always been my issue as a programmer. I love the initial phase of learning and growth. Just discovering a problem and new tools to solve said problem is great. I'd say the most improvement you'll ever make is gonna be during the initial stage of problem solving. You'll go from not being able to solve it, to solving it, to minor tweaks that yield big gains, to slightly smaller gains until it tapers off. Then you hit a point where the amount of effort and tedium required for even small breakthroughs starts to be so much it doesn't feel rewarding. It's something I'm aware of, and wish I could change, but I still haven't quite worked out in my motivation.
Well, most programming is boring, it's not as exciting as racing robots. But if you're good enough it pays well. _(Like 60 bucks an hour!)_ So, if you like having money, there's your motivation. Also, nothing is stopping you from doing fun hobbies with your programming skills on the weekends. _(Well-funded hobbies, I might add.)_
I am not sure where you are in your programming journey but if I could offer some advice I wish others gave me. Once it gets to the point that you are explaining I would say it is not even worth the effort in most cases to seek those tiny breakthroughs. The only exception is in cases like this video where the competition is so slim that those tiny breakthroughs are actually massive (Specially when we are talking milliseconds difference between first and second), or when it is it "mission critical" that you hit certain breakpoints in optimization (Think high frequency trading for example). Though in most cases the time is much better spent somewhere else in your development. I know I used to get bogged down way to much with trying to optimize and over engineering every little thing that it was actually a huge detriment to me actually finishing a project or hitting a release. They key part I found is setting achievable goals that line up with what your competition is doing and sticking to those first and foremost. Then after you have a production ready product you can then start to tighten optimization. A slower product will will always be a better product than a highly optimized one that isn't finished. And as always test, test, TEST! Optimizing randomly does nothing but waste time.
@@classifiedveteran9879 personally as a programmer i usually appreciate the "purity" of the logical problems i have to solve w/o having to deal with all the little quirks and frustrations (and math) robotics involves, but maybe that's just me lol
"There is no such thing as a simple problem!" Damn! This quote hits so haard! I just realised that I could optimise much of the things in life that I considered simple. Everything could be done even better, more efficiently, even if they're simple. I just have to find the right way and when I do, I just have to find a way that surpasses the one I found! Thank you Derek. Your videos are as great as always!
Also remember that efficiency is not the end all be all. Remember to enjoy yourself and the time you spend not to quantify it as you being inefficient with your time.
@@sfglim5341 😂Did I come off as trying to utilise every second? Sorry about that. But I don't compromise on the small things in life that make me happy and try to make only the work I do even more efficient. Anyway, Thanks for the advice man!👍
This is a phenomenal little doc. Super interesting, and info is presented in a way with essentially zero fluff, which is just so rare these days. Thank you!
The section about the mouse choosing the longer but straighter path really struck home with me. Too often in map software, and even games with a GPS system, the "shorter" path will be taken, even though the longer path is actually faster when factoring in deceleration, waiting at stop signs, etc. It's really a fascinating area for optimization.
when it comes to people and autos in cities, the straightest path is usually better.
displacing a block for a better street can improve, the issue is top speeds are limited.
it is fun to optimize
oh yea thats good stuff i like to optimize while I am high on angel dust
Thats actually not true, modern gps factor in that too.
Totally agree. The 'trick' seems to be able to assign the correct speed/ acceleration times. Doing a 'flood fill' to find the route is one thing, but doing a second form of 'flood fill' where you label each position with an estimated time-to-goal sort of distance.
@@victormiranda9163 And we've all been there where we think, "I need to turn left at some point, which intersection would be the best place? At the light where there is a left-turn signal? Or maybe one block BEFORE the light where I won't be stopped by the light but maybe there will be a gap caused by the light where I can turn left even quicker?" Or do I just make three right turns? lol City driving, you quickly find yourself thinking about things like this and trying to remember what works.
Those turns are unreal, it looks like the mouse is simply teleporting across across certain parts of the maze
That one micro mouse surely do that once it hits 88mph.
@Dont_Read_My_User_Photo ok
Pardon the pun, but it is a-mazing how advanced these tiny robots have become, both in speed and intelligence. 😮
@Dont_Read_My_User_Photo TL;DR
That's what you get with 2 independently controlled wheels.
Sure the mice are cool, but can we talk about the animations at 8:40? So impressive! No idea how they were made, but it really helped understand the concepts. Hats off to the team behind them.
Ikr its soo cool... Alsoo hello there blender guru you taught me blender thanks for that XD
Yoo
Ay the doughnut man
AGREED
Hello donut man
Probably this might get lost in the sea of comments, but I just want to say that this video made me choose my first club at my university. We have an IEEE club, and it has a micromouse year-long project. I was so thrilled when I first heard about it. I am a CS major, but I've dabbled a little in electronics. I am exited about how it is going to go for me.
are you winning, son?
are you winning, son?
Lol it went better than I was expecting this first term, but I didn't win. I wasn't last either though. There are three more terms to go.
Although, I kind of dislike the software we're using. Bad and glitchy interface for the EDA part. The coding software lacks modern features such as multi line editing, static analysis, code suggestions and snippets, and has a dated UI.
For the EDA software I can only compare it to my experience using programming software since I don't know much about EDA software. Is it all so bad? The one we're using is Fusion 360. I'm honestly astonished it is paid software. Thankfully we're on a free student license though.
@@davidflores909sounds like you’ve found a passion project that could improve robotics and earn you a lot of money!
Good luck!!! Nerds FTW! 😁
One thing I like about this engineering competition is that, since there aren't heavy financial incentives involved (like pretty much any other engineering project), people are given the chance to try whatever they want and be as innovative as they like.
Even with incentives, all they would need to be innovative is low costs for parts and work, and rules allowing multiple entries per participant (and no entry-fee)
Literally, if this competition doesn't show that capitalism doesn't produce innovation, i don't know what will
@@raymondqiu8202 You cannot argue that because A causes X, that B does not cause X as well...
@@raymondqiu8202 You don't understand the way capitalism does innovation. If there is big money riding on something, the capitalists will do quite well at figuring out how to get that money. It is only once they dominate a field, and risk becomes expensive, that they stop innovating.
@@jursamaj capitalism doesn't do innovation, people do. begging engineers to read one ounce of Marx
As an electronics engineer this was one of my favorite projects that I have ever done. From the firmware, circuit design , algorithms and mechanical design every part of this robot is just pure absolute joy of engineering.
Do you mind giving me inputs? I am an EE student and I want to know what I need to know and any other things required to try make one
bro, are you bald?
as normal guy , i salute you electronics engineer. as a normal guy
I wonder how common extreme weight optimization is... Drilling holes into PCBs, using the lightest materials available, shaving them down to barely not break.
Surely that could get you a few ms due to faster turning speeds.
Also, how relevant are aerodynamics on this tiny scale?
Pin this
Man, seriously.. The guys behind the video editing and simulations in your videos are pure genius. Wish I could meet such guys to learn from.
🤔
They are Veritasium, mate
@@koenamh He's got a team behind him nowadays right? Did Derek make the animations? Does he still do his own editing?
@@Hugh.Manatee I'm 99% sure he doesn't
@@Hugh.Manatee Just look at the end of the description to see who made what in this video. Pretty detailed so i like it xD
Man, this is fascinating. Initially I thought this was a remote controlled competition, but after seeing how fast they were moving I knew that wasn't possible. It's really impressive what we can do with robotics these days, even on such a small scale!
If you remote controller is a computer, it would be possible to go arbitrarily fast with remote control.
As an electronic engineer, this is one of the most epic electronic engineering vids I've seen. Thanks Veritasium
Same
Np i got u
So am I, I saw the length of this video and thought: "Eh not gonna sit and watch for 20 mins" but I got absolutely enthralled. Really considering making one!
IIT has a course called CS 102 you might enjoy
If _elevation height_ isn’t a “violation”… why not just launch a drone (aka: map~>process~>drive)💁♂️
When the guy you were interviewing said "you come along one day, you see everything and you go "huh. that doesn't look to hard, i could do that,' but then you find yourself sucked into a deep and rewarding hobby" i felt that in my bones. I got into rc planes much the same way. Honestly watching this micromouse thing made me think the same thing like huh i bet i could make a mouse..
you are right, i felt his words too! i have a similar story; ive watched a lot of rc planes but it looked so damn hard and the cost involved is toooo high so i never ventured into it. however when I had the chance to attend a uni technofest where I saw contestants competing with their soccer cars, it clicked - this doesnt seem too hard! And thats how i got into making my first rc soccer car using arduino uno. now this mouse vid makes me think, how to even start coding such a thing!?
This is how I got into slot car racing. Just go along, enjoy the weekly racing... go to a national race competition, finish in the bottom 10%, get the bug more... a few years later, routinely entering 6 and 12 hour races with an annual 24 hour (as a team, not just myself o_o)
Still want to get into RC aircraft, but £££ of course. And I want to try the fan concept from micromouse in a slot car first, to see if it even works with our tracks (wooden tracks with a routed slot are often smooth, but the majority of my races are on plastic track that has imperfections... the smooth plastic sheet from the downforce demo in this video would be a dream to race on!)
Yeah but like rc planes, you really have to derive your own joy from it. Maybe it's different where you live, but people are kinda a-holes about the rc aircraft hobby. They either don't want it around, or they've forgotten more than you'll ever know. Maybe it's like that with everything.
I thought to myself "That is the driving force of humanity lol" when the guy said that.
Timestamp?
As one of those who missed the podium of the All-Japan Competition this year, I can tell you that the level at which they are competing for the champion is on a completely different level.
one of them mentioned that he changed the optical rotary encoder disc from plastic to paper, making it 0.15g lighter!
what do they mean i cant attached nuclear reactors and rocket propulsion to my micromouse
Well on a micro scale that 0.15g could be something like 3 pounds relatively
So they have already swapped steel to carbon fiber screws or axles or straight to adhesives to save weight? Biggest issue i see with these advances seem to be that its money game to manufacture lightest parts witch require high quality tooling to produce well as having already wealth of knowledge on the robotics. Sure i can plan maybe even lighter mouse with things mentioned, but i'm decades behind on building the software to level where i could even compete.
@@Hellsong89 skill issue (couldn’t resist)
Is jumping allowed?
Wow, this brings back memories. As a student, I helped the IEEE bring the first Micromouse competition to Australia in 1988. Our team (Macquarie University) didn't win that year, but did the next and went to Singapore to represent Australia. I remember we had to use tape differently. We had developed our mouse on a practice maze where the surface had become slippery over time. When we went to the competition maze, which was new, the wheels gripped a lot more than we were used to - so we wrapped tape around the wheels to reduce grip and match actual performance to the motion model the mouse was using. We all learnt a lot about robotics and real-time coding. It was a fantastic tool. (I still have all the photos somewhere...)
thank you for sharing your story! This video was the first time I ever heard about Micomouse! I instantly fell in love with the whole thing! how wonderful and exciting these little machines are! Quite impressive evolution of hardware to continuously push the limits of the game or competition! its so smooth and exhilarating :)
Jollyjohn What coding language did you use? How is it stored and executed?
As someone who has participated in robotics competitions, it's so emotional, it's like horse racing, but you have spent months building the horse with everything you have. Just being there with all these people, seeing their genius solutions to the problem, it's so much fun. I would truly recommend it to anyone
which league of competition? I was on an FRC team in highschool!
@@stuchris I participated in student robotics, thats a competition in Greate Britain, but my group also went to EuroBot several times
How much technical knowledge do you need to get started, can you do it without an engineering degree?
@@yune1000 you can literally do it in middle school with no prior knowledge
@@yune1000 absolutely, I was in highschool, so I had no degree at all. I think you can learn most of what you need on TH-cam. Soldering would be a good skill and some basic knowledge of how coding works. Everything else will come with time and practice
My respect to all the previous engineers of the past whose mouse was really slow, their consistency to push this competition further paved the way for today's modern engineers. This is one of the prime examples of what humanity can achieve while working together generation by generation.
@@muddypawswanderlust It's part of my humanity to claw my way out of eating nothing but scraps, and onwards into engineering.
Saying that feats of science is a waste invalidates people who actually escaped the poverty line through science. It's like telling me that I need to go back down there just because I'm able to feed me and my family now.
Instead of being derogatory to science, why don't you just inspire people to aim for this knowledge so they too escape like I did.
People inspired me to climb, and so can you.
Oh yes, and by playing playfully !!!! While doing the most serious of all engineering works.
@@muddypawswanderlustyou don't have to choose. You can do both at the same time.
@@muddypawswanderlust I'm sure you spend every second of your life dedicated to making the world a better place and never waste time on any kind of entertainment and you only spend enough money to survive while donating the rest to charity.
@@muddypawswanderlust what do you do to stop world hunger?
It's amazing how such a simple concept as a robotical mouse running in a maze can have so many implications and thought put into it.
Maybe it is simple that enables competitors to come up with original ideas.
In 1980 I was 15, bought my first electronics magazine. It had a micromouse article, that inspired me to get into computers. At 58, I'm a software developer for my own business.
You are old!
@@joshdavis3743 only when I look in the mirror.
am i the only one who had a big wide smile throughout the whole video? i am just amazed and fascinated by simplicity of task but the ferocious ingenuity of the competitors. just loved it
same
lol same
Same
same
I kinda wish he'd segued into robot-sumo. The robots and many of the strategies are similar, but they need to tackle a dynamic problem (push the other robot out of the ring) rather than a static one (navigate an unchanging maze).
Once you understand what goes into mouse navigation, this goes from appearing as odd nerd behavior to something genuinely impressive.
Yupp I think that's most things. That's why I love learning! Appreciate life!
well said. youre hired
and when they put machine guns on them and send them into tunnels after humans...
Same with any sufficiently advanced "odd nerd behaviour" tbh
Be that as it may, those are some shockingly weak mazes with **many** paths to success. Lets get some AI generated mazes in there where excessive diagonals are not included...
It’d be cool to see a maze with different elevations throughout.
or a 3d object which could have intersting shortcuts depending how the maze wraps around
That's exactly what I thought!!!
And opposite burms and different textures and bumpy sections
@@macallan3933 rally mouse
Non-euclidean mazes :D
14:16 I love the shocked reactions from the spectators.
the way they manage to maintain a perfect distance from the walls, and go SO FAST is insane
Not really. Keep in mind that the microcontrollers in those robots can do hundreds of millions of computations per second. If any uses an FPGA instead, that could be an even bigger number. From the robots' perspective, it must "feel" like driving at 0.01 mile per hour.
@@TheNefastor it’s just incredible to watch something so small maintain such precise control from the perspective of someone who has very little experience in robotics.
@@TheNefastor using FPGA's was also my first thought in reducing the computation times dramatically. I don't think that any of the winning mices are using a microcontroller.
@@Craftlngo I wouldn't know, but don't underestimate MCU's. The fastest STM32 runs at 550 MHz last I checked, that's plenty enough to run this kind of challenge.
@@TheNefastor How about the momentum, power cut-off, and wheel friction, do they calculate all of them as well? I wonder if let's say the sensor and computer can decide the next step fast enough, will the output of the movement be straightforward?
Woah! When I saw this video was posted, I walked straight out of my office 30ft to tell Dave Otten (from the video) that it was posted. He was quite excited!
Did you make diagonals in the hallway?
@@ChemEDan between lab benches, yes. Gotta be efficient
seriously under rated comment!
Ah... 30 feet isn't far enough to justify using a portal gun, I get ya
20:20 Imagine a giant cylindrical maze where the mice can go upside down. Or even a maze with loops like in Sonic, so the mice will have to account for more than a 2D map of the area.
I’m thinking 3D mazes in water or air mazes. But, surely, one can complicate it even more, adding rare shapes to it or even simulating 4 dimensions, building a tesseract.
It really has stopped being a maze solving competition, it's about movement execution.
Imagine quadcopter maze running.
mario kart 8
A Möbius-Maze?
It was neat watching the engineering evolve from just mapping the maze to taping off the wheels to increase traction
This video was a roller coaster: First stunned because I thought they have to solve the maze in their first run, then disappointed because they didn't, then amazed again about the speed of these things and the engineering done to achieve that
As someone who led a micro mouse team back in undergrad, this video is extremely well done and interesting. Thankful this video exists.
i’ve decided you didn’t and are wrong
@@TheFakeGooberGoblin bro is disgrace to hampter lovers
@@memehamsterr one of these days your shoes a will tie themselves.
I'd love to see a 3D micromouse maze with all sorts of walls and ceilings and loops to drive on, using vacuum fans to stick to the surfaces
or use a drone micromouse
@@praveenmotamarri drons, but as small balls....without any fans outside, and can roll on wall to maximize speed when turning
I came here to say this. I see that it's already been said. So i second it.
Imagine all the possible Fosbury flops
@@praveenmotamarri there are drone obstacle courses...
Gotta say my thanks as this video helped me create a first person maze game based on the maze circuit designs on the video for a university project and the panel/judge loved it with the addition of a horror theme through sounds, lighting, and objects in the distance. It was also interesting to learn about the micromouse competition while I was at it and I was able to replicate the diagonal movements the micromouse make on the mazes on my game.
Thank you again.
I love that they are allowed to experiment and add new hardware to the mouse; it will be great to check back in on these competitions in a few years time and see what innovations they have come up with
I think this is crucial to the event's longevity. "Solved" competitions are only solved when there is no more room to iterate within the ruleset, so flexible rules are the best way to foster innovation.
Maybe in the future there will be variations of the game involving 3d mazes and other types of obstacle courses
It will be embedded with the brain of a 13 year old high school sprinter with angst issues, forced to run the race for eternity to save humanity from the rat race.
I'm sad that this is the first I'm hearing of this amazing competition. Thank you for bringing this to our attention!
It loses novelty fast. I've watched before
*His method surprises me. A Friend that I referred to him, just received €50,150 profit after 7days of investing.....I became jealous,...Lol*
I love that Red Comet got there faster than the other mouse by actually doing what racing drivers do and taking the *racing line* to the goal, ie. maximising top speed through the straights and minimising speed loss by taking fewer turns. Brilliant.
The fact that that consideration doesn't seem to have occurred to any of the other competitors before then tells you something quite deep about knowledge: you don't know what you don't know. There will always be 'unknown unknowns'. Saying 'we've reached our limit, we've solved all the problems there are in this subject' is a failure of imagination.
i really thought "unknown unknowns" wasn't the right word to use but u prove it right (or wrong?)
How do racing drivers take fewer turns if they're racing the same track?
@@FancyUnicorn Racing "line" is important because the track width is usually 2x - 5x the width of the car. The most efficient use of available grip comes from maximizing the radius of each turn (although there are exceptions) by moving across the track.
For instance, the "racing line" entering a left 90-degree corner would have the driver start on the right side of the track approaching the corner, move to the left during the turn while striking the inside left apex, and end up back on the right side of the track on corner exit. This "line" maximizes the turning radius, and is much faster than staying on the left side of the track for the entire turn.
@@nativenugget major boondocks vibes
@FancyUnicorn they don't take fewer turns. They take more efficient ones.
The Micromouse that won by finding the faster, not shorter route being named "Red Comet" is a cute touch.
In Japan, there's a famous series of giant-robot anime called "Gundam", and one of the main bad guys from the original series is named Char (he's an ultra famous character that inspired legions of imitators). Char pilots a "Zaku II", which is normally a mass-produced giant-robot, but his has been customized heavily and painted red. They say his custom Zaku goes three times faster, earning him the nickname of Red Comet.
It'd be surprised if that reference wasn't on purpose!
Was waiting for someone to point this out
The really interesting part of this for me, as a motorsports fan, is the fact that so much of the innovation has followed a similar path to motorsports.
The famous Brabham BT46 "fan car" was a F1 car that had a fan attached which sucked it down to the ground, providing greater downforce and cornering. It debuted in 1978 and was banned after a single race (which it won).
I was thinking about this exact thing. I like how micro mouse doesn’t change the rules when a certain change becomes commonplace or too dominant unlike in Motorsport. There’s always room for innovation.
@@pobrecitossb7450to be fair, innovating on a huge vehicle is far more expensive than innovating on a mouse sized robot.
No, no, that was just a cooling fan. 😉😄
Thank you. I was trying to remember where I'd heard about the car with a fan for suction to hold it to the ground.
@@tthurlow thats not really the issue that keeps motor sports from doing crazy stuff like they will try in this competition. While yes innovation in motor sports is expensive, we've seen over the decades the insane amount of money companies will spend to innovate to win a race.
The issue with motor sports is the fleshy meat bag operating the vehicle. If a little mighty mouse robot runs into a wall at 50 mph, catches fire and goes pop, it's kind of funny and everyone might be out some money. If an f-1 car goes airborne doing 250 mph into the bleachers because Mercedes was allowed to do whatever, you could easily see a large amount of human casualties.
A great example is the old group B rally circuit where there where minimal rules for the manufacturers. It got wild, the cars where insane, tons of innovation and lots of death and injury for the short time it existed.
I would love to see a layered maze with multiple floors and ramps, like a parking hall. Bottom is the start and top is the goal
And they need to make the problem more complicated again - like adding in the free-standing walls. How about some curved walls, or pegboard holes in the floor, or rough surfaces, or transparent walls, or curtained-off short-cuts?
Doors/gates
Opening and closing gates like in fall guys
Add a lava moat filled with fire alligators
Would create problem with visibility
Wow, I'm almost 40 and I remember competing in this kind of competition back when I was 15 and studying for my IT GCSE. I remember spending hours tweaking the motor commands to the main 2 wheels to be able to take corners as quickly as possible and very crude attempts at a maze searching algorithm - I think I made some terrible combination of trial and error and "always keep your hand on the left wall". One of my best memories of that class :)
wow
Amazing. Never heard of this before seeing this video.
@@MonikaDudek-sw8piPlease am new to this and I've incurred so much loss in investing.
Am so happy my financial life has changed ever since I knew Mr Alan Hernandez I've been earning over $20,600 every week.
@@MonikaDudek-sw8piThank you ma 🙏 for sharing his details
This flood fill optimization algorithm is only suitable when you can safely assume you know the general direction of where the end goal is. In the case of the micromouse competition, the goal seems to always be the center of the maze, so the solution is to march towards the center and find the path of "max descent" toward that center.
Pretty impressive. Going from "this is boring" to "I bet I will be the one who come up with the next big innovation on this great sport" in less than 25 minutes.
Best of luck on your journey. ⛵
Check _superiority complex_
you're a candidate to go from "this is bs" to "I'm the best example ever" in 11minutes
Im a motorsport enthusiast and got really excited when they announced Roborace. Sadly it never caught on and became a joke before disappearing.
Seeing those robot mices racing in those mazes really is awesome and I'd happily watch an AI race with full size cars and tracks.
I'd be able to enjoy crashes without guilt!
@@DizzyDisco93 yeah and since there wouldn't be no human inside the vehicle, safety would be limited to spectators and we could have super light and fast cars !
In all actuality you'd watch it once and probably never again because it would be incredibly boring. At top tier racing, once all the cars are the same from hitting the limit of technology and/or budget, the only real dynamic factor is the human component.
@@zwan1886 there's always a human component, and already today the bigger factor in most racing events today is more the human engineer rather than the human driver imho.
@ Then you don't know much about racing because they put caps on what is allowed, and when there aren't the races are won by whichever organization has more dollars, so it's just pay to win which doesn't make for an exciting spectator sport either.
Calling that mouse “Red Comet” is such a great touch. It’s a reference to the nickname to a mobile suit pilot who was 3x as fast as the others in Gundam!
Spotted that too, I love that reference! 😁
If they have a Char Aznable mouse in the competition, Mighty mouse = Big Zam.
red always go faster
oh its not about that guys dog then?
Along similar lines, the original competition LeMouse 5000 refers to the french 24h endurance car race at Le Mans (as the french use "souris" not "mouse" for computer & other mice).
The story telling on this video feels great! I have been following this channel for many years now. But how captivating the videos are still keeps increasing. I just watched 25 minutes about little mouse-like maze-solving robots, but it felt like 5 minutes.
Some History: The first Micro Mouse competition was won by former colleagues of mine at Battelle NW in Washington State. They had a 3-step algorithm - 1) Random Walk through the maze, 2) Explore every square (and walls) not encountered during the first run, 3) Compute and drive the shortest (distance) path. Of course the early mazes were much smaller, and they were also less complex so that a mouse with no smarts could execute the wall following algorithm. The fastest (time) mouse the first year used that technique. The microprocessor they built was from what Intel called "Floor Sweepings" - fully functional, but cosmetically defective chips. These incredibly talented engineers were the first in our department to put together an embedded system as I remember. It was a FANTASTIC place to work full of innovative and amazingly personable people. Best job I ever had! Our group's claim to fame 5 years later was to create the world's first self-contained Rubik's Cube solving robot. Just like the first Micro Mouse, Cubot's time of 2:40 has been eclipsed many times over. Still...there's a nostalgic feeling that grabs me every time I see one of these mouse competitions...
woah. that's great
That is actually a cool story. You must be really old though
During those times, what did you guys envision future technology to be like?
@@besterspieler2285 If you're lucky, you will be too one day. Respect your elders.
@@forthebirds4 what he probably meant was that since he has witnessed all that, he might have been a young engineer then, so definitely he may be old, there is nothing disrespecting in asking if someone is old or not, did he de mean him ? What's your issue, what's hurting you so much, calm down bro, with that attitude you are going nowhere....
I did this as part of my electronics university course and it was a lot of fun! Didn't end up with anything groundbreaking, but it's great to go through every stage of design and prototyping and create something that actually solves a practical problem, even if it's a small one.
I did the micromouse challenge 20y ago on robotics class at university. This was a good trip to memory lane but also amazing to see the current level of all participants! Truly outstanding!
It's a little mind blowing. I still see optimization I is there because the mice are not taking advantage of racing lines as much as they could. It is Incredible what these little robots can do.
@@tmi1234567 wdym by racing lines?
@@Martineski bit like racing colours (racing red) but for lines
Looks like the Japanese are dominating this field/challenge.
@Martineski Racing lines are the theoretical line around the corner that maintains the highest average speed and least amount of time. This is where you hear things like, hitting the apex, where you go from out wide into the inside edge to take the widest turn you can without traveling excess distance.
These mice seem to be taking mostly straight lines equidistant from the walls to avoid crashing into them, diagonals excepted. To optimize, the mice would need to hug an outside wall, than turn in a bit early to just kiss the inside wall, then barely miss the next outside wall.
Cannot believe i watched an entire documentary about small little robots having the same g force as formula 1 cars and going so fast you can barely see it, Loved it.
I'm so grateful that I live in a time where I can get this level of information from my couch for free. What a time to be alive.
Facepalm
@@dr.angerous why?
@@Ak-us3sh Probably some ancient alien believer.
Every time I see that phrase I think of 2 minute papers
@@Tp.123- The planet is dying but what can one man do about it? The only thing that can be done is taking down the tyrants at the top.
I don't think people understand how big this event is in Japan.
I was teaching robotics in Japan and a student said that I should come to this club and check it out. It was the Micromouse club I I was shocked at how awesome their hardware and software was.
I had to take a serious look at my viewpoints on robotics after seeing this subculture.
But do you have to be a virgin or can anyone compete?
but why do girls somehow get weirded out when I wink and tell them I can show them my micromouse in my bedroom? are they not into robotics as much as I thought?
@@laimejannister5627 they prefer at least an average size mouse
@@taoarg9000 one time I said I could ask my bros to bring some big ones over and we could try them together then she just left. haven't seen her since.
@@laimejannister5627 Did you try telling them that you can finish in under 10 seconds?
I was in the 1990 UNSW Micro-mouse team in Australia. The previous team had just transitioned from stepper motors to DC motors. The high speed DC motors caused frequent wheel slippage making positional calculations difficult. There were a lot of challenging problems to solve but it was really fun. It's good to see so much progress since then.
This is such a testament to engineering. I'm always impressed how generationally, or year to year, engineering evolves in complexity to become more and more precise and innovative far exceeding what the original concepts could have ever predicted.
The "Strategy" illustrations of how the mouse could reach its goal are fantastic. And all the explanations from the narrator, start to finish, are also excellent and easy to follow. Fascinating video.
Sometimes you come across a thing you've never heard off, and it opens up a whole world for you.
I never heard of this, but it seems to be a longstanding scene of people exited and engaged in a very specific hobby going on for half a century.
People are awesome.
even including fans for suction? these guys are insane, the amount of work put onto this
When I first saw the footage I wonder where they were getting that much traction from and my assumption was magnets (and the maze was built on a metal plate) but doing it with a fan is a far cooler solution to that problem. Self contained as well.
@@truepennytv i thought it was similar to the road used in drag races, the road is pretty sticky, but yeah you're right
And what is so cool is that as long as you stay in the general rules that keeps the spirit intact, no one will tell you "no you can't use that it's too good"
F1 teams were experimenting with that technology in the 70s (as far as I remember), but such fans were prohibited by the technical rules after only one season as fan failures in turns or cars hopping over curbs was devastating and even fatal.
When you think about it, it is actually quite obvious to every car geek.
There have been tons of ground effect cars, including the chapparal 2j (with a fan), or in formula 1 the lotus 78/79 (with skirts), or the Brabham (with a fan, but different), etc.
So IMHO, yes, surprising, but also obvious at the same time 😂
22:11
This clip made me laugh so hard, absolute genius lmao.
I love how the video is building up the tension of the Japan competition of Utsunomiya trying to beat first place.
It's just such a treat to watch
also Red Comet being named after a famous anime character known for being unusually fast.
Got me subconsciously rooting for that mouse to win.
@@nicoliedolpot7213 Sieg Zeon!
This videos was absolutely stunning. You took a sport nobody knew about and turned it into an amazing video. I also wouldn’t of understood a thing without those visuals. Hats off to the team.
My head was bashed in as a baby in the NHS hospital I was born in leavingme withlearned disabilities with government involvement
Absolutely fascinating. It's a real shame this stuff isn't aired on major outlets.
They should have an ESPN alternative channel, with all these more special competitions. This, wife carrying, speed lumber jacking, eating competitions, pumpkin throwing, dodgeball.
@@Binaryrunt So a permanent ESPN Ocho?
TH-cam is a major outlet
@@Binaryrunt can you include tag in there or is it already being broadcasted well enough
So many things to air literally
i love the peoples reaction to the first ever micromouse to cut corners, you can hear everyones amazement at that first turn.
Whoever does the animations to accompany the explanations for these videos deserves a raise! Those were top notch and absolutely vital to the effectiveness of this video!
Everything a computer/AI can do better is boring...
It'd be interesting to add some curved sections to the maze and see how that affects the routing algorithms. It looks like the mice can already handle them mechanically.
CURVES SECTIONS?!?
Something tells me that could either make or break the algorithms.
Think about the flash fill method... they use a grid to map the maze. Now how would that grid work with a curved section?!?
@@00linered I guess you could either subdivide the grid further, or maybe work with floats?
@@00linered wouldn't that be the new challenge?
Or bridges
@@jayathranps1319Exactly, transform the sport! Curved sections would be so much fun to watch.
I just spent 25 minutes engrossed in a video about tiny robots trying to solve something you find in the Sunday paper. This channel continues to amaze.
You forgot to add all the times you rewound so you could see it again...
I see what you did there. A-maze
A-Mazing!
@@hisober 100% unintended, but sure, I'll take the credit 😬
I get that they try to go fast as possible, but going right always solves a maze. Try it yourself. Don't look ahead and always follow the right wall.
16:13 oh my god the gd brainrot has reached me I INSTANTLY THOUGHT OF THE WAVE GAMEMODE SEEING THIS
As soon as I saw this part the Slaughterhouse song started playing in the mind. IM COOKED 😭
That British accent "OH YOU SNEAKY LITTLE-" when it turned diagonally for the first time is hilarious to me
"Oh you sneaky devil you, you cheeky bugger" 14:18
Delighted to see Micromouse getting featured on Veritasium.
High time the competition gets its due!
Almost all of my engineering years back in early 2000s were spent in solving this extremely hard problem.
There were no AI Copilots, and Arduino wasn't even conceived back then. Fun times!
Same! Assembler and an 8bit MCU is all i had! :D Good ol' days for sure!
Same here in 2000s I joined my college team regional Robotics competition several times.
After I graduate I saw my junior using Arduino, I was like holyseez it is way easier now.
Working on algorithms and software is fun, but hardware always annoying, there's always something wrong.
These days you can simply just buy the kit, bought one for my nephew's birthday.
@@RessG I do miss the hardware challenges though - being able to buy everything is great for learning just the software part. But in my view, true skill remains in trying to work with very little pre-fab stuff. The marriage of hardware and software is true engineering!
This is perhaps the only channel whose videos I wait for
You need more channels
@@iPrint3D I follow lots of channels. This one still has my attention after all these years. One thing you'll note is he does not show himself all the time on the camera. He does not appear that often, its mostly his voice.
mine's 3blue1brown
*VSauce has entered the chat*
Lemmino
Unbelievable that this is a Veritasium video. No condescending attitude, no gimmick, no clickbait. Wow. Awesome Ve, love this format, please release more like this!
Sorry to say this but it’s true lol this is better than when he’s on camera
I love these kinds of things. It feels like you met someone 10 years ago and thought their hobby was kinda interesting. Then you come back and they have taken it 1000x further than you could even conceive of 😂😂😂
The next innovation: Micro Mouse Tokyo Drift
Lol
Lol
They make you go faster, you get a boost when sparks come out
*Initial D soundtrack intensifies*
DURIFITOOO
Hats off to all the dedicated builders.
The progress improved with various tricks: Infrared sensors, using diagonals, optimized algorithms, gyroscopes and even fans.
Some might think this is irrelevant for everyday life but it's not.
Fields like robotics and machine learning started as fun but shape our whole community and became indispensable.
This is racist. No black people here. You should have a handicap system to allow black people to compete equally.
But why there are no curves and roundabouts in the maze? Weird and sad. No bridges, no tunnels, no underpasses, no overpasses? Sad and weird it is to see a sterile maze.
I'm 48 years old but this amazing channel always makes me feel young...and hopeful. Thx to all of you for loving this stuff like I do.
As a computer scientist strongly interested in robotics, it always amazes me the different levels of optimization these teams employ in their robots. Just amazing.
The fruits of healthy competition and sportsmanship!
if there's one thing I've learned in my years on the internet, it's to never underestimate the lengths people will go to to win a niche competition over something largely unimportant to almost everyone else in the world. Given adequate time for the competition to grow fierce, of course.
I'm wondering where is the solving part? Does it send out a pulse to determine the path? To solve a maze one would have to explore it...
@@tanzkatzen Yes, the are allowed to let it explore the maze a few times before the timed trial: 4:25
Yeah. But I hate the fact that they are so racist. Only Asians and white people. They clearly need more diversity. Then it will be amazing
Those downforce results are amazing. It makes me wonder if they should include an inverted maze category. Imagine a maze with a ceiling and no floor.
Or a 3D maze, a big cube where you have to get to the center
Ngl, an integration of a multi-level and inverted maze would make this so much more complex, yet exhilarating to watch
@@teslatrooper ooh put a nice little cmos and gimme a vr :D
@@foxgaming76yt24 Drones will get there
But why there are no curves and roundabouts in the maze? Weird and sad.
As an F1 fan, I got extra excited once I saw the tape cleaning the tires. The way they interact with the track surface in various disciplines (shown very well here!) is fascinating.
don't forget the fan car too
@@yourfriendlyweeb like the Brabham BT46B "fan car"
Formula One: **Bans cool, wacky, and clever ideas, including active-suction designs.**
Micromouse: **Remains cool and relevant by welcoming innovation of all kinds.**
@@TVDota2or the brand new Gordon Murray T50.
@@needthistoolthat's to be expected, though. Many of the cool ideas were 2 steps away from catastrophic incidents (ground effect is one such example: it will stick you to the corner untill it doesn't, then you'll be so much over the limit of normal grip that nothing you do will influence the car; and this could happen by chance if even a little bit of air gets in. Nowadays it's not a problem anymore, but the same applies to many other innovations. They could have left in asymmetric brakes tho)
19:49 It's only a matter of time before we have mouse with drs, splitters, rear wings as well as supersoft pirelli tires😂
If you combine maze-solving with "battle-bots", the introduction of multiple bots into the maze trying both to reach the end first, and to destroy their opponents would be very interesting!
plot twist, a maze-creating robot entered the chat
@@danosdotnl now we can introduce our hero "maze runner"
the world needs this
Like king of the hill for mice
PAC MAN style , bring it back
It's amazing to think about how intelligent systems can approach a structure like a maze. While watching this, I started thinking about how I approach maze like structures in games like Skyrim or Doom. I think most gamers probably have a strong intuition for maze navigation, but have no idea of what that strategy is in logical terms.
To sum it up:
If you go to the finish line before you know the ENTIRE maze, you are disqualified
It feels like there’s only 1 equation and about 4-5 “if…then” procedures at most. The rest is controlled by a gyroscope automatically.
Best maze tip almost everyone who solves mazes knows, stick to the right wall unless you loop yourself. Some mazes do that and I hate them. It's very nasty how some of them are so complicated and always just loop after you explore such a deep branch that you have to return because it was one way.
It's human intuition, machines are and possibly will forever have problems with.
No AI here. These are hard coded solutions. Those solutions evolved on wet computers.
I wish competitions like this were big in the US as an educational circuit with different divisions for middle school, high school, and college. There isn't really the massive hurdle of cost and equipment required next to most other competitive events/sports, but there's room to learn so much about all the different disciplines involved. I've helped teach some basic programming and embedded systems lessons at my old rural high school when a teacher of mine asked me to come in for her class, but she was the last teacher left that would even think about interesting academic adventures for the students. A cool result of those lessons was that she went on to really get into robotics and the next school she went actually allowed a robotics club, and they competed in all kinds of stuff at a national level.
That's so cool
This would be perfect for STEM highschool. Cheap and easy entry with a huge ceiling to grow and learn into
Unfortunately in US schools they worry more about tolerance and inclusivity, instead of education and competition...
Have a look into FIRST robotics competitions! theres multiple different tiers for elementary, middleschool, and highschool with nearly a hundred thousand various teams in the US alone, and hundreds more across the entire world! I took part in highschool myself and its exactly what you're wanting here!
I mourn not having this in highschool.
It's the sort of thing with an insane breadth of learning potential, coding, robotics, engineering, physics, etc.
But most importantly it is interesting, competitive, collaborative and iterative.
Competition and technological advancement will inherently drive kids to learn, teach, collaborate and improve.
I love the idea of this. It's a really cool way to involve science, mathmatics, robotics, and fun into a really cool competition.
Fan cars have existed as a concept since the 80s. The first was Brabham in F1 that won its first Grand Prix and then the concept was immediately banned from all motorsport. It pulled a low pressure area underneath the car sealed by skirts via a massive fan at the back. It was ostensibly for engine cooling. It’s seen a revival recently with the McMurtry Speirling which is a tiny super powerful electric road car that can generate 10000N of downforce at standstill.
just say 10kN or 1ton. hagerty media did a video on that crazy car. the guy clearly didn't enjoy the ride physically :D
The Chaparral 2J is a fan car *from 1970* and probably served as an inspiration for the BT46B.
It was more than a concept before the 80's. The Chaparral raced in Can-Am in 1970.
A circular maze would be fascinating! Really adding cool maze shapes
As a start, even an "off-grid" walls' design would be challenging to solve
that Inception scene...
Agreed!
Yes, that would be a cool next challenge, or add in multi levels
I was dying imagining how it worked at the start. And then you came with the most freakish didactic and animation that blow my mind. Congratulations, this channel is crazy awesome
Yeah same dude... Also nice pfp 😊😉
A simple misunderstanding pioneered the pursuit of Artificial Intelligence. Damn that’s some kind of crazy it’s to the point where it’s genius.
This is probably among the best videos you've ever made, Derek. Just a perfect mix of everything that we have come to love about Veritasium!
My favorite teacher of all time was my 11th grade math teacher, Mr. Hartle. I once asked him why we need to learn algebra, geometry and so on and his answer surprised me (but makes perfect sense). He said, "Most people will rarely need to use any of those in their daily lives, but what's great about learning math is that it helps you learn how to solve problems in general, which most people WILL use on a regular basis." I think that axiom applies to micromouse competitions: It teaches you how to problem solve and innovate.
Body builders are not learning how to lift weights but to build muscle mass. Math in the same way increase overall intelligence, especially the younger you start it. Obviously also help with solving problems in general, though closely related to overall intelligence they are still different things.
Math is amazing, even though I think right side of the brain is capable of even higher level of intelligence and while we should learn math, we should not ignore things like intuition etc.
@@juzujuzu4555the two types of thinking are complementary though, it's better to give attention to both.
I recommend the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman that goes into this.
"Let no one ignorant of geometry enter." - Plato, (inscribed above the door to his school of Philosophy)
Well, Jimmy, you won't need these skills later in life, but the smart kids will.
Hartle of Tau fame?
A submarine version would be really interesting and get even more fluid dynamics involved in the problem.
Submarine would also be 3D maize rather than 2D
They already do this. Its called RoboSub competitions
great!
@@asandax6 What if there was a 3D version that required flying? That'd be a challenge.
@@Doctor_Yuri but that’s not a maze competition
This inspires me. There is no need for any fancy reviews. Simply put, this inspired me.
Ive never once studied robotics but it seems to me that this sort of thing would be a great introductory course to the subject
Sorry bro, but this kind of thing is so far away from introductory, introductory robotics are like: open and closing a gate, or lifting up some wheight with a motor. Actually doing robots its on the midterm of robotics, and competitions like this are endgame things.( Sorry for the possible typing errors)
@@klenom112 I think he meant it in the way of being introduced to the potential of robotics during introductory courses. Show students the possibilities, let them imagine the what ifs, and then the basics begin.
@@anotherdayanotheranimation Excelent point man, didn't saw that way, it is a actually awesome way to introduce robotics.
Its actually really not that far out there to use this as introductory robotics, even in a practical sense! Before I went off to college, I participated in a highschool robotics competition that McGill University hosts, which does exactly this. All the equipment is standardized with a few customization options, and over the course of a couple days they introduce the different features and how to write code on the arduinos that drive the little mice, and then you have a sandbox day to try different things with different mazes before you submit your final version for the contest. They use very simple mazes, and you have very few options for sensors, but in my opinion it was the perfect level of challenge!
In my university it's a class they teach you to code and then at the end you build a micro mouse or a robot that does something like following a path then lifting a can or moving some servos to carry stuff. This class is on the camputer/electrical engineering idk if there is something similar on computer science since they only do coding and stuff while we do hardware and some coding.
One of my professors once told how he took part in these competitions when he was a student. They won like 5 years in a row in the 80's! Until, I think in Japan, the maze materials were changed so they reflect UV instead of IR light 😂 (or the other way around) and somehow everyone forgot to mention this little fact to one team, and one team only 🤔 but the multiple aspects combined in these competitions, and the memories of an old nerd, made it super interesting to listen to!
g00ks are unable to accept defeat and resort to cheap cheating...nothing new here
I have never heard that story before, and I've spent hours talking to Dave Otten and other 'veterans'. What is the name your professor, and university when he competed?
I never knew I needed micro mouse in my life. What a fascinating competition! Very cool seeing all the disciplines coming together for something so novel and fun
Man, seriously.. The guys behind the video editing and simulations in your videos are pure genius. Wish I could meet such guys to learn from.
I think it would be really cool if the next step was to add a vertical component to the maze, with hills, possibly different levels where the end could be anywhere. It would be real cool to see the AI have to solve how to control acceleration for uphill climbs and slow down enough not to go flying off at the top.
I like it
funny you mention hills, i thought about cambered corners. you could speed up for certain corners but would have to slow down for others
Have you forgot about the suction at the bottom
maybe even some trap doors and elevators so mouse has to learn what will take it to which level, and figure out at what level are they at any moment. Also make it more like pacman, add a robotic cat, trying to catch it and eat it? Finally instead of having all of them do separate runs, add them all at once, make it a crush derby, arm the mice with chainsaws and watch it become REALLY popular.
i was thinking about a maze that turns upside down halfway through. Since they already have the suction force to stay attached to walls and such.
It would seem that eventually going 3D is inevitable. The micro mouse capabilities will eventually outperform the single ground level maze. Providing second and third levels with ramps would increase the difficulty level tremendously.
Don't forget loops and lava.
after reading the first two sentences of your comment i thought of the mice having to ride walls with centrifugal force and the finish could be anywhere not just on the ground.
multiple floors might be more reasonable though 😅
@@iUUkkhot wheels
I think adding rewards in random places of the maze would come first. Then they could create a category where the score would be measured as rewards/time.
But then creating such a maze could probably come with a greater cost resulting in a greater registration fee resulting in only the rich being able to take part in such contests.
bro I can barely figure out the "captcha" puzzles/mazes... some people just built diffy
fr
fr fr
Yoooo, I didn't know you watched Veritasium, Jake! Based meme dad.
Jakerton is turning into Justin Y
Didn’t expect to see you here
This actually helps a lot if applied to food delivery, not even kidding. The shortest route is not always the fastest route. So I never even realized I was playing this game the entire last year, lol.
Even including fans for suction? these guys are insane, the amount of work put onto this🤯
As seen on some crazy racing cars from the 1970s
I got SO excited when you got to the part about turning forces, and I guessed right before you said it that they were creating vacuums to hold the mouse. I’m not usually a very mechanically minded person, and it was really a joy to have an AHA! moment organically like that. I am so appreciative of the ways that you can share other’s passion in such effective ways. I didn’t know or care about robotics in the slightest before this video, but now I’m excited to see what the future holds for micromouse optimization.
I thought the same thing at that part. Only because there's an electric race car called the McMurtry Speirling that utilizes an underside fan to generate massive downforce. The thing is insane.
Optimization has always been my issue as a programmer. I love the initial phase of learning and growth. Just discovering a problem and new tools to solve said problem is great. I'd say the most improvement you'll ever make is gonna be during the initial stage of problem solving. You'll go from not being able to solve it, to solving it, to minor tweaks that yield big gains, to slightly smaller gains until it tapers off. Then you hit a point where the amount of effort and tedium required for even small breakthroughs starts to be so much it doesn't feel rewarding. It's something I'm aware of, and wish I could change, but I still haven't quite worked out in my motivation.
Well, most programming is boring, it's not as exciting as racing robots. But if you're good enough it pays well. _(Like 60 bucks an hour!)_ So, if you like having money, there's your motivation. Also, nothing is stopping you from doing fun hobbies with your programming skills on the weekends. _(Well-funded hobbies, I might add.)_
I am not sure where you are in your programming journey but if I could offer some advice I wish others gave me. Once it gets to the point that you are explaining I would say it is not even worth the effort in most cases to seek those tiny breakthroughs. The only exception is in cases like this video where the competition is so slim that those tiny breakthroughs are actually massive (Specially when we are talking milliseconds difference between first and second), or when it is it "mission critical" that you hit certain breakpoints in optimization (Think high frequency trading for example).
Though in most cases the time is much better spent somewhere else in your development. I know I used to get bogged down way to much with trying to optimize and over engineering every little thing that it was actually a huge detriment to me actually finishing a project or hitting a release. They key part I found is setting achievable goals that line up with what your competition is doing and sticking to those first and foremost. Then after you have a production ready product you can then start to tighten optimization. A slower product will will always be a better product than a highly optimized one that isn't finished. And as always test, test, TEST! Optimizing randomly does nothing but waste time.
Ya, that just means it’s time to find a new problem to make a game out of
@@classifiedveteran9879 personally as a programmer i usually appreciate the "purity" of the logical problems i have to solve w/o having to deal with all the little quirks and frustrations (and math) robotics involves, but maybe that's just me lol
I think what makes this video so interesting, is how it shows the evolution of human technology at a smaller, much more comprehendable scale.
The great thing about veristasium is that you make the explanations easier to digest with the animations. Big respect for editors and animators 👍
"There is no such thing as a simple problem!"
Damn! This quote hits so haard! I just realised that I could optimise much of the things in life that I considered simple. Everything could be done even better, more efficiently, even if they're simple. I just have to find the right way and when I do, I just have to find a way that surpasses the one I found!
Thank you Derek. Your videos are as great as always!
Also remember that efficiency is not the end all be all. Remember to enjoy yourself and the time you spend not to quantify it as you being inefficient with your time.
@@sfglim5341 😂Did I come off as trying to utilise every second? Sorry about that. But I don't compromise on the small things in life that make me happy and try to make only the work I do even more efficient.
Anyway, Thanks for the advice man!👍
This is a phenomenal little doc. Super interesting, and info is presented in a way with essentially zero fluff, which is just so rare these days. Thank you!
This is the best TH-cam Channel ever. Period.