The amazing micromouse roars on [Spectral Lines]

IEEE SPECTRUM was just entering its teenage years when, 37 years ago in this column, I challenged its readers to design and build a maze-solving "micromouse." It would have its own self-contained logic and memory and would successfully navigate a maze that Spectrum's own engineer-editors would design. The configuration of the maze would be held secret until race time. Each mouse would be given an opportunity to probe the maze in test runs, learn from its mistakes, and thereby improve its time in the final run.