Rat's Life比赛由ICEA项目组织，意在促进研究并激励大家对生物机器人学控制的兴趣。该项比赛面向所有群体和个人，无需任何费用。参赛者将能够下载免费版的webots软件系统来用于仿真机器人环境，在仿真环境中，两只老鼠会被至于类似迷宫的环境中任其求生。仿真环境中的控制器将能够控制实物e-puck机器人，并在LEGO（乐高）结构组建的迷宫中运行。

比赛官方网站：http://www.ratslife.org

比赛通知英文原文如下：

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/* RAT'S LIFE: robot programming contest */
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/* call for contest */
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/* http://www.ratslife.org */
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This contest is organized by the ICEA project to promote research results
and stimulate further interest in bio-inspired robotics control. The participation to the contest is open to anyone and free of charge.

CHALLENGE

Rat's Life is a complete cognitive robotics benchmark that was carefully
designed to be easily reproducible in a research lab with limited
resources. The real setup relies on two e-puck robots, some LEGO bricks
while the simulation setup relies on the Webots robot simulation software.
This benchmark is a survival game where two robots compete against each
other for resources in an unknown maze. Like the rats in cognitive animal
experimentation, the e-puck robots look for feeders which allow them
to live
longer than their opponent. Once a feeder is reached by a robot, the robot
draws energy from it and the feeder becomes unavailable for a while. Hence, the robot has to further explore the maze, searching for other feeders while remembering the way back to the first ones. This allows them to be able to refuel easily again and again and hopefully live longer than their opponent.
The e-puck robots are equipped with several several sensors, including a
camera, 8 distance sensors and a 3D accelerometer. Developing a robot
controller requires basic programming skills in Java language. Different
approaches can be investigated and combined with each other, including
robot control, image processing, landmark based navigation, self localization and mapping (SLAM), game strategy, autonomy management, AI, learning, etc.