Interest in Programming Competition?

Is anyone interested in participating in a FIRST-only team programming competition?

See this other thread for info ... http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=25123

Reply here if you are interested.

[Ryan M.]

Depends on when it is and the cost of the entry fee (still being disputed over at the other thread, so I don't know what you'll decide). Sounds like fun!

[Astronouth7303]

Originally Posted by SilverStar

Is anyone interested in participating in a FIRST-only team programming competition?

See this other thread for info ... http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=25123

Reply here if you are interested.

Sure, after I finish Autonomous.

How about one for what you run in a bot at a competition?

[HuskieRobotics]

I would be interested, but like they said I need to know what the entry fee is going to be.

[CrashZero]

Well it is nice to know that my team just signs me up for stuff.

What do you think is a fair entry fee and prize?

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.

[mtrawls]

This sounds like a fun thing ... but I'm not too sure about entrance fees and prizes and all. Maybe if it started out as a friendly competition with name recognition and a virtual pat on the back the reward more participation would be obtained. I assume the simulator would be available to teams so they could test their code? (How about the source? Would this be developed independently ... or is community involvement being sought).

Eithe way, all I can say is now is too soon! Far too much going on to give it any serious thought (in school alone ... but also I believe there's some sort of robot competition approaching? )

Point taken well, but if something is to be ready when Nationals are over, I think it would be best to plan ahead.

1. Yes, the simulator would be available to teams ahead of time.
2. Who is writing the simulator? I don't know. Maybe I'll make it a sourceforge project.

And, I think the visual simulator will be a Java/C++ hybrid, not Flash.

OR - the simulator could be a Direct3d application that would download real time data from NRG's server.

[Astronouth7303]

There's an idea. DirectX covers video, audio, multi-player, and probably some other things. But realtime may be a little excesive (Maybe not- you may just stream position data and sound)

If you go DirectX, can we send virtual models of our bots with an INI describing motor data?

[CrashZero]

I must say that using DirectX is one of the best ideas i have seen posted on this fourm. Not that i am saying that i would not be interested if you didn't use it cuz i still would be. (Even though my team said i would participate before i even knew about it) I think that this is a very creative way of fundraising and depending on just what the fee is I would be very interested.

Originally Posted by Astronouth7303

There's an idea. DirectX covers video, audio, multi-player, and probably some other things. But realtime may be a little excesive (Maybe not- you may just stream position data and sound)

If you go DirectX, can we send virtual models of our bots with an INI describing motor data?

That is a great idea for motors being describing in an INI. Virtual models would be possible if someone can write a model loader in Visual Basic for DirectX 9.0. I've begun writing the simulator, I'll probably have incremental downloads accessible at the RoboCoder (any ideas for a better name?) site:
http://nrg.chaosnet.org/coder

I would have to precompute each match's results at our computers. Then I would make the simulator download the latest match and play it so that each robot followed the path I precomputed. Then after the match, you could resubmit code to improve. I would then precompute the next match's results, and the cycle continues.

I'm trying to figure out a way to spread the word, how would I go about doing this?

[Astronouth7303]

If you check MSDN and search for DirectX, there should be some SDKs on it. I downloaded v7, but I don't claim to understand it. I would recomend starting a thread to create the file standard. (.Bot for data? )

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally Posted by SilverStar

Is anyone interested in participating in a FIRST-only team programming competition?

*intriguing* I'll bet our team would be interested.