Being a Macintosh user, and employed under the name Macintosh, I will throw in a suggestion. Go to Apple's downloading section, and look through the development tools given, they are either freeware or shareware/demo versions of the software that you guys may be able to use for programming your bot this year. I'll give you the link:
Apple Development Tools for OS X. I hope this helps. Also about an adaptor for using serial, Keyspan offers one, and I know it has been used in previous years and works pretty well.
Ivey