Question 1: What was the general strategy or plan behind your bot design?

A-Mazing(R) was designed to follow the right wall. A-Mazing(L) was exactly the same as A-Mazing(R), but I put the batteries in the other direction. ** Actually, A-Mazing(L) was just a mirror image of A-Mazing(R)

Question 2: What technologies/mechanisms did you use?

It used a touch sensor for the front (to detect a wall) and a more complex light sensor assembly for the side.

Question 3: What was the most challenging aspect of construction?

Fitting the whole design into the six inch maze was sort of tough, but I think the hardest part was making a reliable sensor array. The front touch sensor must be able to be activated from most any angle, while the side sensor needs to give a different reading as the robot gets close, and too close, to the wall.

Question 4: Are there any special features you care to talk about?

The light sensor assembly is pretty cool. It has a wheel that rolls along the wall, attached to an arm. As the robot gets closer to the wall, the arm rotates in, towards the robot. Around the pivot, is a white 1x1 beside a black 1x1, which rotate directly in front of a light sensor. So, as the robot gets closer to the wall, the sensor goes from white (off the wall) to black (too close to the wall). The robot tries to keep the reading on gray (somewhere in the middle)

Question 5: What surprised you about how your bot behaved/performed during the event?

The robot was very fast, and very reliable. My only problems came when I installed brand new batteries. It went much faster than when it was on older batteries, so it acted a little different. The only adjustment I had to make was to the turning radius when it was going 180 degrees around the end of a wall. Once I fixed that, it worked fine, again.

Actually, I was more surprised to see how many problems the other robots had. A-Mazing has been entered in three maze contests (so far) and very reliably made it through the maze every time, easily taking first place in each event.