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Contact: Tep Dobry, 956-9740	Air Date: June 8, 1998

UH Manoa Engineering Students are Micromouse Champs   Forget a better mousetrap. A student team from the University of Hawaii has built a better mouse. A UH team won the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' 1998 Micromouse Competition for the second year in a row. The UH team built the winning autonomous robot "mouse," dubbed 'Iole 'Auana, or "wandering mouse" which ran the competition maze in 44 seconds. In the micromouse competition, student teams design and build a robot. The UH mouse was a battery-powered microprocessor with stepper motors to run the wheels and infrared sensors to see the walls. Each mouse is given 10 minutes to learn the fastest route through a maze-no remote controls, no prior looks at the layout. The fastest run from starting point to center square is the winner. Last year, UH had the only mouse that found the center. This is the University Report, I'm Tracy Orillo Donovan.

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