Tetra is a robot mouse having four wheels and an innovative out-of-the-box design. Recently it completed the “World Class” maze in 4.7 seconds beating the last year record of 6.4 seconds at 30th All Japan Micromouse Contest. Unfortunately it couldn’t win as it malfunctioned in the final stage due to some lighting conditions which affected its tracking, but we have a video of it breaking the record in trial run.

I really like the design of Tetra, it has a clear edge over the previous designs which didn’t look so well. This micromouse looks slim, smart and efficient. It has a whole strip pf of sensors at the front which help to track and maneuver. The speed of the robot is also very fast indicating it’s wheel, battery and sensing powers. There are no less than 8 sensors at front that help in deciding the next move of the mouse. All the body including processing circuitry, battery and wheels are at the back.

It may look simple at its face but trust me, I have worked on robots at college, and it’s hell of a job. It takes months and months to make a simple robot and this one is a piece of art.

We have some videos from 30th All Japan Micromouse contest held on November 2009. The first one shows the tetra mouse in action while second one is an expert’s opinion.

Experts are curios about how it works especially at turns. Everyone loved this robot at the contest.

Via Robot-Dreams | Last year