CPE/CSC 480-Fall 2005 Assignment 4: Simple Reflex Robocode Agent

Note: This assignment is optional. You can use it to replace a low score from one of the first three assignments. I will adjust the overall score for the assignments accordingly.

The task for this homework is to design and implement a simple reflex agent (without state information) using the Robocode agent toolkit.

The number of points for this homework is 25. The score will be determined by the quality of your design and implementation, the level of sophistication your agent achieves, and the performance of your agent in competition with other agents.

Agent Design

In this part, you need to describe the overall architecture of your agent. It consists of the following sections:

• a PEAS (or PAGE) description of the agent;
• a design overview, identifying the main components of the agent;
• a table with the percepts and corresponding actions that determine the behavior of the agent;
• a discussion of the expected capabilities and limitations of your agent.

This part should concentrate on the general capabilities of your agent, and not on specific techniques that you use to endow your agent with these capabilities; that is the topic of the next section.

Implementation

Here you need to discuss specific implementation aspects of your agent, e.g. how you decided to realize the "reflexes" of the agent. You may include relevant parts of your source code here, but make sure that it is explained and commented well.

Performance

Your agent should be able to compete with other Robocode agents. The performance of your agent will be evaluated in two stages:

• One-on-One [10 points]: Your agent will individually battle five of the default agents in the Robocode environment in competitions lasting ten rounds. The set of opponents will be determined in class. You will get one point for each win of a competition according to the standard Robocode scoring scheme.
• One-on-Many [5 points]: In this case, your agent has to fight multiple opponents in one or more competitions lasting ten rounds. All the agents submitted will be randomly assigned into pools of up to ten agents, and the number of points is determined by the ranking of your agent in the competition (e.g. rank 1 gets 10 points, rank 2 gets 9, etc.) If time permits, we will conduct this competition "live" during one of the lab sessions.

Part 1: One-On-One Competition

For the first part, you need to submit the agent design and implementation documents as specified above, together with the code for your individual agent. This agent will participate in the one-on-one competition.

Part 2: One-On-Many Competition

The final version of your agent is due for the second part. It will determine your score through the one-on-many competition.

This is an individual homework, and you need to write your own Robocode agent. You are not allowed to incorporate code from other Robocode agents, e.g. from Internet repositories, or from other students. The use of Java libraries is allowed. Violations of this policy will result in lower scores for this assignment. In addition, the general Cal Poly policies on Academic Dishonesty: Cheating and Plagiarism apply.

Since this is an experimental homework, some aspects of the exact task definition and evaluation criteria will be discussed in class, and may be subject to some minor modifications.