Announcement: AI-Competition Demolition Derby 2010

We are pleased to announce the latest addition to the Simulated Car Racing Competition, the Demolition Derby Competition 2010 (http://www.coboslab.psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de/competitions/).

The Demolition Derby Competition utilizes TORCS, an open-source and completely free race car simulation game. TORCS provides an environment in which human players, traditional AI opponents, and self-made external controllers can race against each other. These controllers can take the same actions as human players (e.g. push the gas pedal or shift gears). However, the controller only gets very limited information about its surroundings (mainly via range finding sensors).

The goal of the competition is to develop such an AI controller for a racing car that successfully competes with the controllers of the other competition participants. The rules of the Demolition Derby Competition are simple: In a large circular arena, the controllers have to wreck each other by crashing into the rear of opponent cars while dodging other cars that are trying to hit them. The last car standing is declared the winner.

Controllers can be programmed in Java or C++; Windows as well as Linux is supported. Participation is free to everybody, participation to the actual conference event is not required. All you have to do is to send us your controller by the submission deadline (27th June or 8th August 2010). For more information on rules, procedure, and submission dates please visit the official Demolition Derby website (http://www.coboslab.psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de/competitions/).