This announcement refers to the Robot Auto Racing Simulation (RARS).
The first RARS races will be held in the computer of Mitchell Timin
on April 30, 1995. Entries will be received by e-mail, directed to
They may be in source code, either ANSI C or C++, or they may be
object files, to be linked with Borland C/C++version 3.1. They must
run with the latest version of the RARS software to be released prior
to April 15. (Robots that are developed with ver. 0.39 will be fine;
they may need trivial changes and re-compiling.)
Entries must be received by 10:00 AM, EST, April 30. If the net is
slow, too bad, so send them as early as possible. It is better if
I receive them a week early, in case there are any problems with
compilation, linking, or execution. (I will inform you A.S.A.P.)
Any robots that cause run-time problems with any part of the
software, including the other robots, will be disqualified. Timin's
judgement will be final here.
There are three prizes. The 1st place robot's author gets his pick
from the three. The 2nd place author picks from the remaining two,
and 3rd place gets what's left. The prizes are:
1. "Street Wizard 5.0" by Adept Computer Solutions. This is street
mapping software which finds addresses, plots quickest routes, and
prints maps and directions. The 120 largest U.S. metropolitan areas
are included on the CD-ROM version. The winner may choose CD-ROM or
diskettes. (runs under MS Windows on a PC)
2. A copy of Mark Watson's McGraw-Hill book "C++ Power Paradigms"
(constraint programming, neural networks, genetic algorithms, and
training recurrent NNs with genetic algorithms).
3. A copy of Mark Watson's Springer-Verlag book "Common LISP Modules.
Artificial Intteligence in the Era of Neural Networks and Chaos Theory".
There will be 12 races, two races on each of six tracks. Starting
positions will be chosen at pseudo-random for the first race on each
track, and then the reverse order will be used for the second race.
Points will be awarded as follows for each race:
1st - 10 2nd - 6 3rd - 4 4th - 3 5th - 2 6th - 1
Winning places will be based on the point total for the 12 races.
If there are six*** or less entries, then all will compete in these
races. If there are more than six*** then qualifying heats will be
run to arrive at six*** finalists.
Track definition files for the six tracks will be released soon.
They will include v03.trk which is in ver0.39 and one simple oval
track, a slightly "stretched" version of the present oval.trk. The
remaining tracks will be complex road-racing type tracks with a
minimum of 15 segments each.
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