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/* RAT'S LIFE: robot programming contest
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http://www.ratslife.org
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This contest is organized by the ICEA project to promote research
results
and stimulate further interest in bio-inspired robotics control. The
participation to the contest is open to anyone and free of charge.
CHALLENGE
Rat's Life is a complete cognitive robotics benchmark that was
carefully
designed to be easily reproducible in a research lab with limited
resources. The real setup relies on two e-puck robots, some LEGO bricks
while the simulation setup relies on the Webots robot simulation
software.
This benchmark is a survival game where two robots compete against each
other for resources in an unknown maze. Like the rats in cognitive
animal
experimentation, the e-puck robots look for feeders which allow them to
live
longer than their opponent. Once a feeder is reached by a robot, the
robot
draws energy from it and the feeder becomes unavailable for a while.
Hence,
the robot has to further explore the maze, searching for other feeders
while
remembering the way back to the first ones. This allows them to be able
to
refuel easily again and again and hopefully live longer than their
opponent.
The e-puck robots are equipped with several several sensors, including
a
camera, 8 distance sensors and a 3D accelerometer. Developing a robot
controller requires basic programming skills in Java language.
Different
approaches can be investigated and combined with each other, including
robot
control, image processing, landmark based navigation, self localization
and
mapping (SLAM), game strategy, autonomy management, AI, learning, etc.
SCHEDULE
The contest starts on January 7th, 2007 and terminates on June 30th,
2007.
During this period, the contest remains open to new competitors. Every
business day, a contest round is executed so that every competitor will
face at least one opponent and the general ranking is updated
accordingly
in the hall of fame. All the matches of a round are immediately visible
online from the contest web site.
PRIZES
On June 30th, the competitor ranked #1 in the hall of fame will receive
the
simulation prize of the Rat's Life contest: a license of the Webots PRO
software (about EUR 2,000). Then, the top 5 competitors ranked #1, #2,
#3,
#4 and #5 will be selected for a real world series of 4 rounds. These 4
rounds will executed with two real e-puck robots roaming a real LEGO
maze.
After this series of 4 rounds, the new #1 will be awarded a real e-puck
robot (about EUR 600).
HOW TO ENTER
Participation to the Rat's Life contest is totally free of charge and
doesn't require the purchase of any product or service. To enter the
contest,
you will have to register on the
www.ratslife.org web site, download
and
install the demo version of the Webots software, program your robot
controller
and submit your code on the contest web site.
REFERENCES
Rat's Life:
http://www.ratslife.org
IST ICEA project:
http://www.iceaproject.eu
Cyberbotics / Webots:
http://www.cyberbotics.com
e-puck robot:
http://www.e-puck.org
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