Perhaps I missed it in the video, but are the mice driving fully autonomously? That is, are they using vision or other sensors to detect the walls and then are they performing path planning? It all seems blazingly fast.
Or is there some pre-programmed aspect to their paths? Surely it's not dead reckoning?
There was a very brief mention in the video, but this link goes into more detail: https://micromouseonline.com/micromouse-book/rules/. The score of each run factors in 1/30th of the time spent to search. There is a separate period where the mouse can search, and then it goes through the maze at high speed using the route it planned prior. Obviously if you spend a massive amount of time searching, that will impact your score but it seems to prioritize the later, faster runs in terms of scoring.
The mouse is fully autonomous. At the start, the mouse only knows that the coordinates of the goal and that the goal is some combination of to the right and front of the start square.
Currently mice use reflective infrared sensors. The reflected infrared light is used to estimate the distance. Based on this reading, one can determine the position of the mouse and the presence/absence of the wall. This information is used to create a maze map and to navigate.
The Circuit Cellar article mentioned in this thread is an awesome comprehensive introduction to micromouse.
Or is there some pre-programmed aspect to their paths? Surely it's not dead reckoning?