Dear Programming Team Advisor (or Student),
You and your students have the opportunity to make history by participating in the first-ever UF ACM JavaBot Programming Competition. This competition will let your students match their wits against teams from other schools in an event to glorify innovation and technical artistry. Instead of confounding the would-be digital Da Vinci with programming puzzles that stress efficient programming and correct solutions, JavaBots allows him or her to move beyond the confines of precise solutions, allowing for innovation and originality to be the major foci of the competition.
As a competitor in the JavaBot competition, each team of students will utilize UF ACM’s JavaBot Software Development Kit (JavaBot SDK) to write (in the Java programming language) the artificial intelligence to a software simulated robot, or JavaBot, running in the Java "environment". The objective of each team is to develop a strategy so their JavaBot can destroy an enemy JavaBot programmed by another team. A small inventory of commands is available to each team to control their JavaBot: "Scan", "Fire", and "Drive". By utilizing these commands and leveraging the capabilities of the Java programming language, a JavaBot will be capable of tracking down and shooting at opponents, dodging projectiles, or even remembering and predicting movements of its opponent.
If you or your students are not familiar with the Java programming language, this competition can serve as an excellent tutorial project for you or your students to learn and experiment with this versatile language. Our JavaBot SDK contains a step-by-step, interactive online tutorial that will help you create your JavaBot as well as sample JavaBots which you can test and modify to give you ideas on developing your own JavaBot. Change a line of code, and you can quickly see its results in our competition simulator.
Once your students’ JavaBot is complete, you can submit this to the actual competition, which takes place Feb. 24th (the day of our High School Programming and the Engineering Fair). As part of UF ACM’s Engineering Fair display, the JavaBot Competition will be presented on SUN Microsystems servers, sporting our real-time, 3D rendered animations of the competition, replete with detailed robotic models and special effects. The event concludes with an awards ceremony, including awards chosen by the high school students themselves.
There is a $10 registration fee to help defer the cost of shipping the JavaBot SDK. If you would rather download it from the Internet, this fee will be waived. There is no requirement to show up for the competition (although you will miss our excellent 3D visualization of this event). If you would like to be sent a copy of our JavaBot SDK, contact us by emailing acm@cise.ufl.edu or by leaving a message at the ACM Office 352-392-6833. To download a copy of the JavaBot SDK from the Internet and for more information, visit our web page at http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~acm/JavaBots. You can also find an online version of our JavaBot simulator and snapshots of our high-end, professional quality visualizations.
Visit our Web Page and try
out our online (Java applet) version of JavaBots
and snapshots of our 3D high-end visualization of the competition
to be presented
at the Engineering Fair:
http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~acm/JavaBots
Sincerely,
Daniel D. Bui
JavaBot Competition Director/Head Programmer
UF ACM President
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