SCRC 2013 - Simulated Car Racing Competition

Simulated Car Racing Competition
to be held as part of the
2013 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2013)
July 6-10, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Organized by ACM SIGEVO
http://www.sigevo.org/gecco-2013
Submission Deadline: June 21, 2013
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We are pleased to announce the 2013 Simulated Car Racing Competition.
Get ready to enter the challenge and to submit the fastest driver!
** GOAL **
The goal of the championship is to design a controller for a racing
car that will compete on a set of unknown tracks first alone (against
the clock) and then against other drivers. The controllers perceive
the racing environment through a number of sensors that describe the
relevant features of the car surroundings (e.g., the track limits,
the position of near-by obstacles), of the car state (the fuel level,
the engine RPMs, the current gear, etc.), and the current game state
(lap time, number of lap, etc.). The controller can perform the
typical driving actions (clutch, changing gear, accelerate,
break, steering the wheel, etc.)
** BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY **
The 2013 Competition does not introduce any major change with
respect to the previous edition. In particular, we will not
introduce any change to the APIs, such that it will be possible
to build a controller based on the entries of the past year.
** RULES AND REGULATIONS **
The championship consists of nine races on nine different tracks
divided into three legs, one for each conference, involving three
Grand Prix competitions each. Teams will be allowed to submit a
different driver to each leg.
Each Grand Prix consists of three stages:
* the warm-up
* the qualifying
* the race
During warm-up, each driver races alone for 100000 game ticks
(approximately 30 minutes of actual game time) on each track.
Drivers can collect useful information about the tracks and can
tune their behaviors for the next stages. Accordingly, the
performance of drivers in this stage is not taken into account
for their scores.
During the qualifying stage, as in the previous edition, each driver
races alone for 10000 game ticks on each of three three tracks of
the leg (approximately 3 minutes and 20 seconds of actual game time
per track). The eight controllers that bridge the longest distances
qualify for the actual Grand Prix races.
During the final races, these best eight drivers race together. The
races consist of eight times three lap races on each of the three
tracks. At the end of each race, the drivers are scored using the
F1 system: 10 points to the first controller that completes the race,
8 points to the second one, 6 to the third one, 5 to the fourth, 4 to
the fifth one, 3 to the sixth, 2 to the seventh, and 1 to the eighth.
The driver performing the fastest lap in the race will get two
additional points. The driver completing the race with the smallest
amount of damage will also get two extra points. The starting grid
of the first race will be based on the performance obtained in the
qualifying stage. Each subsequent race, the starting grid will be
shifted by one so that each driver starts from every position of the
starting grid exactly once.
As in the previous edition, the tracks used in each leg are unknown
to the competitors.
** WEBPAGE **
http://scr.geccocompetitions.com/
** IMPORTANT DATES **
Submission deadline: June 21, 2013
Conference: July 6-10, 2013
** COMPETITION SOFTWARE **
The competition software, including servers for Linux & Windows,
and C++ and Java clients, can be downloaded from the page:
http://scr.geccocompetitions.com/software
For inquiries send an email to scr-AT-geccocompetitions.com or visit
the Car Racing Google Group at
http://groups.google.com/group/racingcompetition
Please notice that you are *not* required to either attend or
register to the conferences in order to enter the competition.
** ORGANIZING COMMITTEE **
Daniele Loiacono (Politecnico di Milano)
Pier Luca Lanzi (Politecnico di Milano)