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Unbounded Maze (Posted on 2008-01-18) Difficulty: 3 of 5
A programmable robotic mouse is placed at an intersection on a square grid, the borders of which are extendable as needed.

From its initial location the mouse moves one cell forward. It turns right with its next move incrementing by 1.

This incremental process continues up to a certain constraint whereby the mouse resumes the process with a move of one space until that constraint is met again; continue this process until you either return to your starting position or you evidently will never return.

What generalisations can be made about how variations of the value of the constraint affect the path forced upon the mouse?

M

Note:It will be necessary to test a range of constraining values.

See The Solution Submitted by brianjn    
Rating: 4.0000 (1 votes)

Comments: ( Back to comment list | You must be logged in to post comments.)
re(6): No Subject - Constraint | Comment 14 of 19 |
(In reply to re(5): No Subject - Constraint by Charlie)

The following program continues on after the first return to the start:

CLS
c = 0
fprev = 0
fcurr = 1
temp = 0
x = 0: y = 0
dx = 0: dy = 1
PRINT x; y
' x is positive to the right
' y contrary to convention is positive to the bottom
'   but this doesn't matter as left turns would work just as good
'   as right turns.
DO
 s = 0
 c = fcurr
 DO
  moveNo = moveNo + 1
  s = s + 1
  PRINT TAB(8); s; c, moveNo
  px = x: py = y
  x = x + dx * s: y = y + dy * s
  PRINT x; y
 IF x = 0 AND y = 0 OR x = 0 AND dx = 0 AND SGN(y) = -SGN(py) OR y = 0 AND dy = 0 AND SGN(x) = -SGN(px) THEN
  DO: LOOP UNTIL INKEY$ > ""
 END IF
  dyNew = dx: dxNew = -dy
  dy = dyNew: dx = dxNew
 LOOP UNTIL s = c
 temp = fcurr
 fcurr = fprev + fcurr
 fprev = temp
LOOP UNTIL x = 0 AND y = 0

A subset of its output, showing places where the original location was hit exactly (apparently only once, on step 9) or where that location was crossed over, follows:

 x  y   s  c  step
 0  0
        1  1   1
 0  1
        1  1   2
-1  1
        1  2   3
-1  0
        2  2   4 first pass over origin
 1  0
        1  3   5
 1  1
        2  3   6
-1  1
        3  3   7
-1 -2
        1  5   8
 0 -2
        2  5   9
 0  0 landing on origin
...
-7  0
        18  34         72 second pass over origin
 11  0
...
 26  0
        71  89         214 third
-45  0
...
-117  0
        306  610      1292 fourth
 189  0
...
 492  0
        1291  1597    3874 fifth
-799  0
...
-2091  0
        5474  10946  23184 sixth
 3383  0
...
etc.

  Posted by Charlie on 2008-01-23 11:47:41
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