Micromouse contest (perpetuum mogile)

Hello, my name is Bence,

We are a team of 3 students, participating in the Half-sized micromouse contest of our university, the Budapest university of technologies and economy. Details of the contest can be seen at http://micromouse.mogi.bme.hu/. We study mechatronics, and this will be our first independent project.

. The mouse will be autonomous and try to find the fastest path out of a maze.

We are trying to make the mouse as narrow as possible so that we can even pass through parts of the maze diagonally. This influences design choises a lot.

The base for our mouse is a tightly packed, small pcb. Its current plan can be seen on the cover photo. 
The basic operation of the mouse can be seen in this block diagram. 

The core of our mouse's body is the pcb itself, so we have no way to take a photo of it (obviously), but we created a 3d visual representation. 

The parts above are custom designed, and the magnetic encoder's placement inside the wheel base is our unique solution, that we hope will pay off.

Even the longest part of this device is 60mm. Subtracting the area taken up by the motors and positioning stands, and considering that the lower body of the mouse will be sliding, so no parts can be present there, it is a lot of functionality cramped into a tiny space. We tried to pick the smallest parts for these purposes, but since it will be hand soldered, we can only go so small before it gets impossible to solder them by hand. This means we had to design our layout carefully. My opinion is that it was quite a difficult task, considering that we have very little experience in this area. This is our first project after all.

Please consider sponsoring our project, we would be very grateful for that.
Best regards, Bence