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Comment by youngtaff | Hacker News Reader

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youngtaff·

When I was in my teens I can remember people using ZX81s and other computers of the era to build these

Unfortunately can't find a picture of one in Google images

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Here’s a video from 1982: https://youtu.be/usKAEZ8dmQE

What a find! A video posted 10 years ago, 88 views (after you posted here) and a non- descriptive title or description that is about micromouses

How did you find it?

Google image search (what GP tried) for “zx81 micromouse” but clicked on “The rest of the results might not be what you're looking for. See more anyway” at the bottom, which surfaced a link to https://forum.arduino.cc/t/its-1982-and-you-need-a-microcont....

I tend to take it as a challenge when someone claims they can’t find something on the net. ;)

technically thezeus is a zx80, but they're very similar machines from very nearly the same time

I am glad you did! It was great watching this. Thanks!

The longevity of the competition makes it a nice visual demonstration of technology advances. I can't recall other such examples which would be so accessible and span so many decades.

I love how one competitor completely disparages his mouse:

- Can it be considered intelligent?

- No, it's absolutely dim. It will solve, I hope, a particular problem. Outside of this environment, it's useless. He's only following a set of instructions that I told him to do.

I bet that these days, that person would be a lot more enthusiastic: it's artificial intelligence!

I remember a write-up of this competition around the same time, a year or two earlier perhaps, in Popular Mechanics or some such magazine. From memory there were two main strategies: simple brute-force wall-followers and maze-mappers. The only bot I can remember was named Harvey Wallbanger.

Edit: 1980, found it.

http://davidbuckley.net/RS/mmouse/images/PM80p17article1268....

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