This is what I would ideally want the competition to look like:

Write an autonomous program that would read in data from virtual sensors and attempt to do a certain thing. The simulator (that is written by the organizers) would feed realistic sensor data to the program. The program would respond by sending signals to the motors.

When everybody's submitted their code, NRG would make the "robots" compete in an online Flash presentation. Like in real competitions, people would be able to modigy and resubmit their code for subsequent matches. If me and the other NRG members can pull this off, I think it would be really cool.