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* PopRacer AI Programming Team Project *
*      School of Computer Science      *
*       University of Birmingham       *
*                (2005)                *
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*               READ ME                *
*              (AREADME)               *
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Updated A.Sloman 20 May 2009; 18 Jan 2020

Project Report

http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/popracer/popracerreport.pdf (1.4MB).

Mark Rowan's article about Popracer in the Networks magazine: http://www.tamias.co.uk/popracer

The video mentioned there is available here on Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tt-e5biErrQ

About

Team Members

Tar file containing all this material

http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/popracer.tar.gz (about 1.4MB)

Running

Ensure Poplog is installed. Execute pop11 main.p

See 'userguide.pdf' for an explanation on how to use PopRacer.

Architecture

PopRacer is made up of 6 files:

main.p - Runs PopRacer simEngine.p - The Main Simulation Engine, powers PopRacer and provides the GUI. nnga.p - The Neural Network and Genetic Algorithm Module. physicsEngine.p - The Physics Engine bezierDraw.p - The Track Editor bezier.p - The bezier engine, generates the bezier polynomial.

Known Issues/Bugs

13/06/2006

Addition by A.Sloman 13 Jun 2006

Two files with saved populations are provided

demo1.p
demo2.p

A saved file can be loaded into the program before the 'run' command is given.

To the shell type (in the popracer directory):

    pop11 main

When the program starts, the 'help' command gives more
information. To load demo1 type this to the popracer prompt:

    loadcars demo1

(without '.p')

then to start the program type to the prompt:

    'run'

rearrange the three windows to make all visible. Click on
the animate button to turn on animation, the click on 'start'.

If you do it without the 'loadcars' command you'll see the
difference made by the evolution before the demo1 file was
saved.

13 Jun 2006