The First RARS Race Meet

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
met7@cac.psu.edu.  The entries are of course, robot driver functions.
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.  Source
files will be compiled with that compiler.  The races will be run with
the latest version of the RARS software, version 0.50.  (Robots that
are developed with ver. 0.39 or 0.45 will be fine; they may need
trivial changes and re-compiling.)  Object files should be uuencoded.

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 sixteen or less entries, then all will compete in these
races.  If there are more than sixteen then qualifying heats will be
run to arrive at sixteen finalists.

Track definition files for the six tracks are in the file TRACKS.ZIP
on the ftp site, the "tracks" subdirectory.  The track names and
the number of laps to be run on each race are as follows:

  ANEW.TRK      8   laps
  OVAL2.TRK     20  laps
  V03.TRK       15  laps
  STEF2.TRK     15  laps
  SPEED2.TRK    10  laps
  ZANDVORT.TRK  8   laps

Robot code should not make any direct DOS or BIOS calls, nor access
memory in any strange ways.  No peripheral hardware may be accessed,
with the possible exception of disk reading during initialization
(but see next paragraph).  Robots may use the "extern" keyword to
access any data that they can find, but may not alter such data.  Any
robot driver function that causes any problems with any other part of
the software will simply not be used.  Mitchell Timin's judgement
will be final in this matter. 

Every entry must consist of just one file, a source file or a .OBJ
file.  It will be permissible, for the April 30 races, for the robot
to read this file to initialize data tables.  

Each robot must use no more than 25K of RAM, both for its code and
data.  Each robot must execute in no more than 3 milliseconds each
time that it is called, after initilization.  (In practice this just
means that the race can be run at realistic speed, and no slower.)

I won't personally submit an entry for the April 30 RARS races, nor will
any of my family or any close associates here in PA.

All robot drivers that I receive will be held in confidence until
after the races are completed.  After that I will put them on the ftp
site.  Also, I will not announce performance figures for the early
entries prior to race day.

Don't expect me to do any kind of tuning or adjusting or debugging to 
any robot.  Every entry must be ready to race, or it won't.  I will
notify the author A.S.A.P if there are problems, but that might take
a day or two, or even three.

m