[SUMMARY] RRobots (#59)

R

Ruby Quiz

The tournament has been run, so let's begin with the official results. You can
find the complete statistics here:

http://www.rubyquiz.com/rrobots/tournament.html

Briefly though, here are the total wins:

+------------------+-------+
| Bot | Wins |
+------------------+-------+
| Ente | 241.5 |
| RubberDuck | 228.0 |
| RubberDuckLinear | 179.0 |
| WKB | 177.5 |
| Kite2 | 165.0 |
| DuckBill09 | 161.0 |
| CloseTalker | 153.0 |
| GayRush | 115.0 |
| HornRobot | 108.0 |
| Harlock | 67.0 |
| SporkBot | 55.0 |
+------------------+-------+

Looks like our big winner was Ente. I'm told that's German for duck.
Congratulations to Jannis Harder, Ente's creator.

Ente is just shy of 500 lines of code, so we're going to get the short version
below. As always, I suggest looking at the actual code. Here's the start of
the robot:

require 'robot'

class << Module.new # anonymous container

module RobotMath

def weighted_linear_regression(data)
# ...
end

def zero_fixed_linear_regression(data)
# ...
end

def offset(heading_a,heading_b = 0)
# ...
end

end

# ...

Obviously, we have the required module for the robot interface. Then we see the
definition of some simple math helpers.

The interesting part of the above code to me was the second line. Since this
code has no need to refer to the defined modules, classes, and methods outside
of its own scope, the whole mess added to an anonymous namespace. That seems
like a clever way to guard against name collision, among other uses.

One of the larger tasks all the robots had to deal with was turning. You have
to ensure your robot, radar, and gun are facing where you need at any given
time. Ente has a whole module of helpers for this:

# ...

module Turnarounder
# ...

def head_to deg # ...
def head_gun_to deg # ...
def head_radar_to deg # ...
def next_delta_heading # ...
alias turn_amount next_delta_heading
def ready? # ...
def next_heading # ...
def turn_gun_amount # ...
def gun_ready? # ...
def next_delta_gun_heading # ...
def next_gun_heading # ...
def turn_radar_amount # ...
def radar_ready? # ...
def next_delta_radar_heading # ...
def next_radar_heading # ...
def final_turn # ...
def turn x # ...
def turn_gun x # ...
def turn_radar x # ...
def mid_radar_heading # ...

end

# ...

The functionality of those methods should be fairly obvious from the names and
we will see them put to use in a bit.

Next we have a module for movement:

# ...

module Pointanizer
include Math
include RobotMath
include Turnarounder

def move_to x,y
@move_x = x
@move_y = y
@move_mode = :to
end

def move mode,x,y
@move_x,@move_y = x,y
@move_mode = mode
end

def halt
@move_mode = false
end

def moving?
@move_mode
end

def on_wall?
xcor <= size*3 or ycor <= size*3 or
battlefield_width - xcor <= size*3 or
battlefield_height - ycor <= size*3
end

def final_point

yc = ycor-@move_y rescue 0
xc = @move_x-xcor rescue 0

if hypot(yc,xc) < size/3
@move_mode = false
end

acc = true

case @move_mode
when :to
head_to atan2(yc,xc).to_deg
when :away
head_to atan2(yc,xc).to_deg+180
when :side_a
head_to atan2(yc,xc).to_deg+60
when :side_b
head_to atan2(yc,xc).to_deg-60
when nil,false
acc = false
else
raise "Unknown move mode!"
end

accelerate(8) if acc

end

def rad_to_xy(r,d)
return xcor + cos(r.to_rad)*d, \
ycor - sin(r.to_rad)*d
end

end

# ...

We're starting to see robot specific knowledge here. This module deals with
robot movement. The methods move() and move_to() are used to set a new
destination, or halt() can stop the robot.

If you glance through final_point(), you will see the various movement modes
this robot uses. For example, :away will turn you 180 degrees so you move
"away" from the indicated destination.

Now we're ready for a look at Ente's brain:

# ...

class Brain
include Math
include RobotMath
include Turnarounder
include Pointanizer

# ...

attr_accessor :predx, :predy

def initialize(robot)
@robot = robot
super()

@points = []

@last_seen_time = -TRACK_TIMEOUT

@radar_speed = 1
@track_mul = 1

@searching =0
@seeking =0

#movement
@move_direction = 1
@lasthitcount = 0
@lasthitcount2 = false
@lastchange = -TIMEOUT
end

# ...

def predict ptime
# ...
end

def predcurrent
@predx,@predy = predict time unless @predx
end

def tick events

fire 0.1

#event processing

# ...

#moving

# ...

#aiming

# ...

#scanning

# ...

end

def method_missing(*args,&block)
@robot.relay(*args,&block)
end

end

# ...

The majority of that is the tick() method, of course. It's quite a beast and
I'm not even going to try to predict all that it does. The comments in it will
tell you what the following calculations are for, at least. (Jannis should feel
free to reply with a detailed breakdown... :D )

One thing that is interesting in the above code is the use of the passed in
@robot. Take a look at the first line in the constructor and the definition of
method_missing() at the end of this class. In order to understand that, we need
to see the last class:

# ...

class Proxy
include ::Robot

def initialize
@brain = Brain.new(self)
end

EXPORT_MAP = Hash.new{|h,k|k}

EXPORT_MAP['xcor'] = 'x'
EXPORT_MAP['ycor'] = 'y'
EXPORT_MAP['proxy_turn'] = 'turn'
EXPORT_MAP['proxy_turn_gun'] = 'turn_gun'
EXPORT_MAP['proxy_turn_radar'] = 'turn_radar'

def relay(method,*args,&block)
self.send(EXPORT_MAP[method.to_s],*args,&block)
end

def tick events
@brain.tick events
end

end

# ...

As you can see, Proxy ties together the Brain class and the Robot module with a
combination of relay() and the Brain.method_missing() we saw earlier. You could
swap out brains by changing the assignment in initialize(), or even reassign
@brain at runtime to switch behaviors.

Only one issue remains. RRobots is expecting an Ente class to be defined but we
haven't seen that yet. That needs to be resolved before we leave this anonymous
namespace we're in and lose access to all of these classes. Here's the final
chunk of code that handles just that:

# ...

classname = "Ente"
unless Object.const_defined?(classname)
Object.const_set(classname,Class.new(Proxy))
end
end

A new class is created by subclassing Proxy and that class is assigned to a
constant on Object by the name of Ente. That ensures RRobots will find what it
expects when the time comes.

My thanks to all the robot coders, especially for the robots I didn't show
above. They all wrote some interesting code. Also, a big thank you to Simon
Kroeger who helped me setup this quiz, and ran the final tournament.

Tomorrow, Christer Nilsson has a fun little maze of numbers for us...
 
J

James Edward Gray II

Briefly though, here are the total wins:

+------------------+-------+
| Bot | Wins |
+------------------+-------+
| Ente | 241.5 |
| RubberDuck | 228.0 |
| RubberDuckLinear | 179.0 |
| WKB | 177.5 |
| Kite2 | 165.0 |
| DuckBill09 | 161.0 |
| CloseTalker | 153.0 |
| GayRush | 115.0 |
| HornRobot | 108.0 |
| Harlock | 67.0 |
| SporkBot | 55.0 |
+------------------+-------+

It has been pointed out that EdBot is missing from the statistics.
This is an error on the part of the quiz runners, and we are working
to correct it...

Sorry about that.

James Edward Gray II
 
S

Simon Kröger

I'm realy sorry!

I double checked the ML for 'rrobot' and '59' but missed "[SOLUTION]
Robot". Again, thats my fault - new tournament results will follow soon.

cheers

Simon
 
S

Simon Kröger

Ok, i ran a quick tournament with 3 matches per round just to see if=20
there are major impacts on the ranking:

+------------------+-------+
| Bot | Wins |
+------------------+-------+
| Ente | 31.0 |
| RubberDuck | 30.0 |
| Kite2 | 20.0 |
| DuckBill09 | 18.0 |
| RubberDuckLinear | 18.0 |
| CloseTalker | 17.0 |
| WKB | 15.0 |
| GayRush | 15.0 |
| EdBot | 13.0 |
| HornRobot | 7.0 |
| Harlock | 7.0 |
| SporkBot | 7.0 |
+------------------+-------+

I will start a 30 match tournament, but this will take some hours to=20
complete.

cheers

Simon
 
J

Joe Van Dyk

On 12/29/05 said:
Looks like our big winner was Ente. I'm told that's German for duck.
Congratulations to Jannis Harder, Ente's creator.

Ente is just shy of 500 lines of code, so we're going to get the short ve= rsion
below. As always, I suggest looking at the actual code. Here's the star= t of
the robot:

My head exploded reading that. I wish I didn't hate math so much. :-(
 
J

James Edward Gray II

My head exploded reading that. I wish I didn't hate math so
much. :-(

There was definitely a pattern to the big winners: Lots of math. ;)

James Edward Gray II
 

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