Cyberbotics Ltd, the makers of the popular Webots software for robot modeling and simulation, is running a new software competition called "A Rat's Life" to kick off the Chinese New Year. (See: http://www.ratslife.org/.
The contest is organized by the IECA project (Integrating Cognition, Emotion and Autonomy) to promote research results and stimulate further interest in bio-inspired robotics control. Participation in the contest is open to anyone free of charge. Contestants can download a free version of the Webots software for simulating a robotic scenario where two rat robots compete for survival in a maze-like environment. The developed robot controllers can be transfered to real e-puck robots roaming an interactive LEGO maze.
RoadNarrows LLC is a U.S. distributor of both Webots software by Cyberbotics and the e-puck designed by the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. For more information, contact sales@roadnarrowsrobotics.com.
The current status of the competition as posted by Olivier Michel, Cyberbotics:
A contest round is now run every day at 8pm (Central European Time)
with nice automatic movies created for each round. I would recommend
you to have a look at the very last match between the two top
competitors, antoinea101 and Freshmen: http://www.cyberbot
We have currently 9 active competitors out of 50 registered users. As you can see on the hall of fame, the contest is currently dominated by Swiss (5), Romanian (2), Hungarian (1) and Turkish (1) competitors. But where are the French, American, British, Iranian, German, Indian, etc? Will they let the Swiss people win the fame and the prizes (an e-puck robot and a Webots pack) that easily?
Feel free to spread the word about the contest and don't be afraid to step in. The level of intelligence of our rat brains and the fame of the winners will increase with the number of competitors! A PDF sheet with our call for contest is available here: http://www.ratslife
In previous editions of similar contests we had entire classrooms participating (from Zürich, Edinburgh, Brazil). If you know professors who might be interested to have their programming or robotics class participating in the contest, let them know. The final mark doesn't necessarily need to be based on the hall of fame ranking ;)
Thank you for your support!
-Olivier
Link: Rat's Life
Link: Cyberbotics Home