Goal:

The Demolition Derby 2012 competition challenges you to design a racing car controller that manages to effectively crash into other cars while avoiding being crashed itself. Thus, the goal is simple: Wreck all opponent cars by crashing into them without getting wrecked yourself.

Demolition Derby takes place on a large circular track (surface: asphalt, length: 640m, width: 90m, number of laps: 1000). The sensor information is egocentric fostering the design and optimization of local interaction routines. 
The last car standing is declared winner of the match.

Rules and Scoring:

The most important sensors and actuators of the competition are:

1. 36 noiseless opponent sensors with a range of 300m indicate the presence of opponents around the own car.
2. 19 noiseless track edge distance sensors (200m range) indicate the local track outline.
3.  Other track information sensors indicate the orientation on the track as well as the locality with respect to the track edges.
4.  Car state sensors indicate the current speed, gear, rpm of the engine, as well as the wheel speeds.
5.  Damage sensors indicate the current own damage as well as the damage induced to other cars.
6. Actuators include all usual car control options (using the clutch, changing gears, accelerating, breaking, steering).

The damage model is such that the goal is to crash into other cars coming from the side or behind. Front crashes as well as crashes into walls do not result in damage. This is done to foster strategic driving and to decrease randomness in the results.

All racing controllers participating in Demolition Derby have to qualify for the final showdown match by competing with each other in preliminary 1-vs-1-matches. The best eight controllers then fight each other at the same time in ten final matches. The car that wins most often in these final matches will be the Winner of the Demolition Derby Competition. 

In the preliminary 1-vs-1-matches, every controller drives against every other controller, one at a time. After each match, the car with less damage is declared winner and earns one point. The sum of points earned in all 1-vs-1-matches determines a controller's ranking. Each match has a maximum duration of 15.000 in-game timesteps (about 5min simulated time).

The best eight controllers according to this ranking compete with each other in all-vs-all-matches. All eight controllers are placed on the track at the same time and, therefore, have to deal with multiple opponents at once. To prevent ?coward? controllers, which avoid interactions until all opponents wrecked each other, each car's damage is reset to zero every time a competitor gets wrecked (i.e., when that car's damage reaches a value greater than 10.000). Ten of those matches will be played.

Participation is open to anybody. You do not need to participate in the conference to send an entry. However, the price will be received by the best competitor that also participates in the conference.

Submission:

Please send your controller per email with subject line [demolition derby entry] to the following address:
martin.butz(at)uni-tuebingen.de

Required files for Java Users: Please send the necessary sources and compiled .class-files. Clarify in the text of your mail which class file is the main that is to be started.

Required files for C++ Users: Please send the source files necessary to compile the code to us.

Please include your full name and address (and optionally affiliation) in the mail as well as a indicative name for your controller (to be used in the competition rankings).

Deadline:

The submission deadline for GECCO 2012 is July 2, 2012

Further Information and Getting Started:

Further information (including manual, downloads and self-explanatory video) can be found below. Note that we also provide an evolvable client to facilitate learning and optimization of controllers.

See also further videos on the demolition derby competition as well as the COBOSTAR racer at: http://www.youtube.com/user/CognitiveModeling?feature=watch

You may also visit the Car Racing Google Group at:http://groups.google.com/group/racingcompetition for further information.

Organizer:

Martin V. Butz, University of Tübingen, Germany

with support from

Andreas Alin & Dennis Schwartz, University of Tübingen, Germany
as well as
Daniele Loiacono, Luigi Cardamone, & Pier Luca Lanzi, Politecnico di Milano, Italy