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Solving Railway Mazes: From Image to Solution
Authors

Antonin Slavik
URL: http://www.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~slavik/visualdsolve/index.html
Stan Wagon
Organization: Macalester College
Conference

Wolfram Technology Conference 2011
Conference location

Champaign, Illinois, USA
Description

Roger and Lionel Penrose have created some interesting railway mazes. A railway maze asks the solver to get from start to finish by pretending to be a train that cannot go backward. Thus at every junction the train must follow the curve of the track; it cannot make sharp turns at intersections. We will present a method that starts with an image of such a maze, such as a JPEG file, and finds all solutions. One of the Penrose mazes can be found in the attached notebook. The challenge is to get from A to B by following the curves at each junction.
Subject

*Wolfram Technology
URL

http://www.wolfram.com/events/technology-conference-2011
Downloads Download Wolfram CDF Player

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SolvingRailwayMazesPartOne.cdf (3.3 MB) - CDF Document
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SolvingRailwayMazesPartOne.nb (3.3 MB) - Mathematica Notebook
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SolvingRailwayMazesPartTwo.cdf (8.2 MB) - CDF Document
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SolvingRailwayMazesPartTwo.nb (8.2 MB) - Mathematica Notebook