Campus becomes virtual battlefield
By Youmi Chun
May 19, 2003 9:00 p.m.
For the first time in nearly a decade, the Battling Robots
Competition will again be held at UCLA.
Hosted by UCLA’s Eta Kappa Nu and Symantec, the
competition, which is free to the public, will be held tonight from
5 to 9 pm in 3760 Boelter Hall.
Battling Robots is a programming competition where entrants
build software-controlled robots which navigate through a simulated
maze. The robots battle, each trying to escape from the maze with a
specific prize before its competitors.
There will be at least 17 teams entering the competition this
year. UCLA alumnus Carey Nachenberg, the coordinator of Battling
Robots and a full-time Symantec employee, hopes students will get
excited about programming after witnessing the competition.
“I want people to learn new things about programming and
to have a good time,” he said. “We want to show people
that it can be fun and exciting.”
Entrants use their computer programming and design skills to
make an intelligent robot capable of functioning entirely on its
own.
Once the competition begins, entrants have no control over their
designs.
The competition allows the entrants to build their skills in
computer algorithms, software design and robotics.
Winners of the competition will receive $100, $75 and $50 for
first, second, and third place, respectively.
“It took about a month and a half ““ about 40 hours
““ in order to design and program this robot,” said Gil
Rosen, a third-year electrical engineering and computer engineering
student.
Despite the amount of work he put in, Rosen was upbeat about
creating a robot for the competition.
“The experience was a lot of fun,” he said.
“It’s fascinating watching your own creation move, act,
think, and come to life,” he said.
Nachenberg also hopes to recruit students to Symantec after
seeing what they’ve produced.
Tonight, each robot will battle five others in a series of
rounds, with several groups of robots battling simultaneously.
The top robots will go on to a final competition. Points are
rewarded based upon how many rounds the robots have won.
At the end of each round, winning robots are given one point,
and the robot with the greatest number of rounds goes onto the
final round.
At the beginning of each match, all of the entrants are placed
randomly within a maze of walls. The robot must then navigate
through the maze to reach the exit.
However, while in the maze, each robot will encounter
computer-controlled drones which attack the robots. One of the
drones holds the prize that is required to win the match. Once
having obtained the prize, the robot must then find its exit and
use it to end the game and win a point.
Each round is predicted to take about 15 minutes, with the whole
competition lasting about 2-3 hours.
The competition will be set up on 4 or 5 different computers,
with spectators watching each robot.
The robots can attack, turn invisible, change the maze, shoot
down walls, and pick things up, among other things.
For some of the participants, the experience was a great way to
apply their engineering knowledge to something outside of
class.
“It was a distraction from studying, and I had fun
designing it,” said third-year electrical engineering student
Lawrence Tsang.
“I liked being able to apply my knowledge to somewhere
other than class,” he said.
Some entrants feel positive about their robots in
competition.
“I’m rather confident since he works well in some
situations,” Rosen said. “I like the robot a
lot.”
Others are not sure how their robots will stand up against other
entrants’.
“I’ve been working on it, and I have no idea how it
will react with the others,” Tsang said.
“So far it looks good and works a lot better than I
thought it would. It also does well in the practice games,”
he said.
