[agents] [2nd Call] The League of Robot Runners (a new MAPF competition)

[Sven Koenig]

2nd Call for Participation:

The League of Robot Runners


www.leagueofrobotrunners.org 
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.leagueofrobotrunners.org__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!vPN3sD_0fxiwTv94NrjKzPowgyqGSkLw_zukKw3UoYXc8e8bD025fJGLZ3w4OIrDoL5wygV-G8I8xfY$>


The inaugural League of Robot Runners is a competition series that 
tackles one of the most challenging problems in automated logistics: 
coordinating a team of moving robots.


Simplified versions of such problems appear in the research literature 
under the name Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF), Multi-Robot Path 
Planning (MRPP), Multi-Agent Coordination, and many others. Sponsored by 
Amazon Robotics, the League is designed to bridge the gap between 
academia and industry, by identifying the core combinatorial challenges 
that make robot coordination problems difficult to solve in practice.


In the competition, a team of (simulated) robots work together to 
complete errands. They fulfil orders, sort mail and navigate tricky grid 
environments. Participants must compute efficient and collision-free 
paths for the team. By following these paths the robots can get to where 
they’re going as quickly as possible, so that they can complete as many 
errands as possible, all before time runs out.


The competition is open to teams and individuals from any geographic 
region and from any community. All approaches (and their combinations) 
are welcome, including but not limited to:


- algorithmics and AI planning,

- combinatorial search and optimisation,

- machine learning and reinforcement learning,

- mathematical programming and operations research, and

- any other class of reasoning techniques.


Awards and Prizes:


Participants will test their skills against the best in the field, 
competing for fame and financial prizes across three categories:


Category 1; Best overall: $5,000 USD

The winner of this category has the highest overall score across all 
problem instances in the competition.


Category 2; Line honours: $2,500 USD

The winner of this category has the largest number of best solutions 
across all problem instances in the competition.


Category 3; Fast mover: $2,500 USD

Participants are eligible for this category if their solver always 
returns a set of valid actions (one  for each agent) before the end of 
each planning episode (one second each). The winner of this category has 
the highest overall score among all eligible participants.


Notable performances in each category (2nd, 3rd) will be highlighted and 
recognised with an award certificate.


A limited number of training awards are also available on a basis of 
merit. These awards come in the form of AWS credits worth $1,000 USD and 
are intended to help participants who need large computational resources 
for pre-computations (for example, model training).


Submission Process:


Participants register on our website with their GitHub credentials.  
Competing solvers are then uploaded to a private repository. The 
submitted code is automatically cloned, compiled, and executed on our 
evaluation server, and participants can track their progress via our 
live leaderboard. Submissions are welcome anytime before the deadline!


We provide starter code, example problems, solution validators, 
visualisers, and extensive documentation. After the competition, 
participants are required to open source their submissions so they can 
be studied and adopted by others in the research community.


Important dates:


- November 30th, 2023: Competition ends

- December 20th, 2023: Results are announced


Competition chairs:


- Daniel Harabor (Monash University)

- Sven Koenig (University of Southern California)

- Cathy Wu (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

- Jingjin Yu (Rutgers University)


For more information,please visit our website: 
www.leagueofrobotrunners.org 
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.leagueofrobotrunners.org__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!vPN3sD_0fxiwTv94NrjKzPowgyqGSkLw_zukKw3UoYXc8e8bD025fJGLZ3w4OIrDoL5wygV-G8I8xfY$>

For community discussion,join our official Discord 
https://discord.gg/CEYT4g4raR 
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We hope to see you there!

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