mms-competition-proxy

Intro

This python script is meant for use in the Princeton University Robotics Club Virtual Micromouse Competition. It acts as an intermediary proxy program between the simulator and the competitors' algorithms. The purpose is to add several features that are not part of the simulator itself, but which add to the competition realism. It works by forwarding commands from the algorithm to the simulator and forwarding responses from the simulator back to the algorithm. The simulator itself can be found here.

Features

Generally, this program allows the algorithm to interact with the simulator the same way it would without this proxy. However, the following features diverge from the features of the simulator.

• Disable movement after crash: After crashing into a wall, the mouse cannot move, turn, or detect walls, until the mouse is reset to the start square. If any of these commands are called while crashed, the proxy will return "crash" instead of forwarding the command to the simulator.
• Move limit: To simulate the time constraints of a real-life micromouse competition, the proxy imposes a move limit. When the sum of total effective distance and total turns exceeds the move limit, the program will terminate. This feature is enabled with the --limit command-line argument, which allows the user to specify the limit. For the competition, a limit of 2000 will be used.
• Unable to view stats: The algorithm cannot call getStat. This is to encourage algorithms to keep track of their own score without external assistance.
• Logging: If the user passes a filename with the --out command-line argument, the simulator will log the stats of the run to that file at the conclusion of the run.

Setup

1. Ensure Python is installed. This script was developed on Python 3.8 but should be compatible with other versions of Python 3 as well.
2. Install the simulator, which is named "mms". The repository can be found here. Since the release version is not always up-to-date with the latest changes, it is required to build the project from source by following these instructions.

Usage

Instructions for getting started can be found in the mms repository. Only a few additional steps are needed to use this proxy. To get started, run one of the sample algorithms, such as mms-cpp. First download the sample algorithm and launch the mms simulator. Select the "+" button near the upper right of the window to configure a new algorithm. For the directory, browse to the mms-cpp directory. The build command should be g++ API.cpp Main.cpp. The run command should be python3.8 ../mms-competition-proxy/proxy.py --limit 2000 ./a.out, assuming the proxy is in a neighboring directory. Click OK and then click Run. You should see the mouse follow the left wall until the move limit of 2000 is reached.

If using the sample Python program instead, there is no build command and the run command will be python3.8 ../mms-competition-proxy/proxy.py --limit 2000 python3.8 Main.py.

Bugs

Please report any bugs or unexpected behavior encountered with this script.