Micro-rato Robotics Contest: Technical Problems and Solutions

The Micro-Rato Contest of the University of Aveiro is a competition among small autonomous mobile robots that is organized by the Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics Department of that institution. The contest aims at promoting, in a festival-like environment, the practical and integrated use of several topics typically taught in electronics and informatics courses. The contest takes places annually since 1995, and a software-based counter-part, the Ciber-Rato contest, started in 2001. The total participation has been significant, not only of local students but also from other schools and even ex-students. Along these years a substantial amount of related literature was produced, covering the main technical issues that need to be dealt with when participating in the contest. In this paper we put together such literature and review those main technical issues, namely related to sensing, motor control, behavior programming and coordination.