Open Invitation to help design a programming game for FRC

[teslalab2]

Originally Posted by faust1706

FRC programming ultimately fails to demonstrate what computer science really is. With very little algorithm design and no requirement for efficiency, it is not the game that we are looking for unless you make the game into a simulation with scoring to allow for people to write AIs to play it.

To put things into perspective, here is the game I designed but ultimately decided it wasn't the game we were going to go with:

There are two seeds that are siblings in the ground, Mark and Jessica. They want to be reunited, but cannot see or talk to one another. They can grow their roots in an attempt to find each other, as well as resources. First, they must be reunited by touching roots, and then they can begin gathering resources in the ground to be as healthy and big as possible. It is a 3d map and there are boulders in the ground that cannot be moved and cannot be moved through.

Task: Design and write an algorithm that each tree will use to find each other as well as find resources.

Scoring would be based off of speed (efficiency) of the algorithm, as well as organization and structure of code. Bonus points would be provided if you provide the big-O of your algorithm as well as prove mathematically that as the iterations approach infinity, the probability of convergence approaches 1.

Then do it for more than 2 trees, say 5, and more dimensions than 3, say 100

I completely agree! people have no idea the work that goes into getting the data from a joystick to the roborio. and the roborio is quick enough you could write absolute crap, and it would be fast enough! make them program something useful on a ti-83 calculator. thats when efficiency matters! You could have a program challenge where they have to make a program to calculate digits of pi, and the fastest one wins.