aMouse, the Artificial Mouse, is a pan-european project, involving researchers from six groups based in Germany, Italy and Switzerland.

The Man in the Rat Mask says...

"At the risk of confusing my metaphors, aMouse's low weight is going to be like a millstone around its neck. However, its advanced pathfinding abilities should enable it to run away more successfully than the other contenders. 'Live to fight another day' might yet turn out to be a better strategy than 'Bite the big one's nose off'."

Darwin IX is a mobile robot platform with artificial whiskers and effectors, coupled to a bench-based computing cluster that does the thinking, and exhibiting learning through neural plasticity.

The Man in the Rat Mask says...

"This guy is definitely a contender. His design clearly owes something to Sergeant Bash, and just look at those teeth! But the researchers involved have made one crucial error - they have taught their offspring the meaning of fear - and, as we all know, fear leads to hate, hate leads to anger, and anger is the path to getting your whiskers torn out by the roots."

Psikharpax is based at the AnimatLab in Paris, and can categorise objects using vision to use as landmarks in mapping and navigation.

The Man in the Rat Mask says...

"Ha. From what little we've been able to find out about this guy, it's clear that he's a lover, not a fighter. He came into the world in Paris, after all. While he might rule the roost at the discotheque, we don't think the other contenders will find him a serious threat in combat. But if WWF is anything, it's always full of surprises..."

Cyber Rodent is rodenty in a different way; it has no whiskers, but follows rodent living strategies using control-theoretic systems under the basic constraints of self-preservation and self-reproduction. It is also the only one of the listed projects to be investigating behaviour amongst multiple robots.

The Man in the Rat Mask says...

"High-tech, high-spec! And since this one is a cluster-bot, any pretender that takes it on is going to have to keep its wits about it, and keep an eye out over its shoulder. But what no whiskers? When it comes to the penultimate round, and the combat is in total darkness, cyber rodent is going to find out just what it means to have its spatial presence detected by an array of haptic sensors."