If you prefer, you may instead propose a variation on this task. For instance, you may want to start with an existing team and build a coach agent to control its behavior. Or you may choose to start from scratch and build a team entirely on your own. Or you may choose to create agents that can do some subtask of the full robotic soccer task (for instance, create a very good goalie or shooter via some machine learning technique). The instructor will do his best to provide you with the appropriate code to allow you to get to your proposed starting point. Expectations will be commensurate with the starting point you choose, so feel free to follow your interests.

You may work as an individual or as a team of at most 2 people. 2-person teams should only turn in one submission of the programming portion of the assignment. However, each person must turn in an independently-written proposal and final report. Expectations will be higher for 2-person teams.

The schedule is as follows.

• Project Proposal due on Thursday, October 17th at 2pm.
    Submit a proposal including:  
   
• Team members
• Proposed starting point. That is, if you're not going to use the code base provided in assignment 4, what code would be provided to you? (No guarantees you'll get what you ask for.)
• What you plan to do and how you plan to do it. Be specific regarding what aspects of the complete task you plan to focus on most.
• What you hope to show in your progress report (see below)

The proposal should be at least 3 pages double spaced. It should be written with the goal of convincing us that what you are proposing to do is interesting and non-trivial. Connect the proposal to the class readings as much as possible. Members of 2-person teams should clearly identify what their roles will be with relation to the overall project. The proposal will be evaluated primarily on written expression and coherence of argument. Feedback will be given both on writing and content. Please turn in a hard copy of the report at the beginning of class. Reports that arrive after that (including partway through class) will be considered late.

• Progress Report due on Thursday, November 14th at 2pm.
      Submit a progress report including:
  
  
• A revision and expansion of your proposal including all revisions suggested on the graded proposal.
• A description of what you've accomplished so far.
• As appropriate, a re-evaluation of what you plan to do and how you plan to do it.
• A team-name for your team in the tournament. 
• NEW: The progress report should still be structured as a proposal, now with a section on "previous work" describing what you've done so far. 

• A logfile demonstrating your progress (preferably showing a whole team on the field doing something).
• Binaries with instructions on how to run your team (as a README file). 
• There should be a start script that accepts the name of the machine running the server as an argument.

To turn in your logfiles and binaries, use the turnin program with grader "vinay" and assignment label "progress". When the assignment is there, send us an email to that effect. Please turn in a hard copy of the report at the beginning of class. Reports that arrive after that (including partway through class) will be considered late.

• Your final Team due on Tuesday, December 3rd at 2pm.
     Submit your final team including:
  
  
  Source code and executable to run in the tournament. 
  A start script that takes the name of the machine running the server as an argument. 
  A README providing a brief guide to following your code (including which files are most relevant to look at, etc.). Make sure it is absolutely clear how to run your code. If you think your team may need more than one machine, please prepare scripts to start on multiple machines and indicate this clearly in your README file.
  A logfile of your team playing against itself or any other opponent.

To turn in your logfiles and code, use the turnin program with grader "vinay" and assignment label "final". When the assignment is there, send us an email to that effect.  If your code does not run, the instructors will contact you ASAP to remedy the situation. If you don't expect to have time to fix bugs at that point (for instance because you're still working on the final report), make sure it works the first time

• Final Report due on Thursday, December 5th at 2pm.
         Submit your final report including:
  
  
  • A detailed written report describing how your team is constructed, what it does, its merits, and its deficincies. As much as possible, you should relate your approach to the readings from throughout the course. View this report as a term paper. It is in place of a final exam and will be a large factor in your final grade for the project and for the course.
  • Members of 2-person teams should clearly identify what their roles have been in relation to the overall project.
  The final report should be at least 8 pages double spaced. The grade will be based both on the content of your report (i.e. what you did) and the presentation (i.e. how you motivate it, explain it, and connect it to the readings).  Please turn in a hard copy of the report at the beginning of class. Reports that arrive after that (including partway through class) will be considered late.
  
  
• TOURNAMENT on Tuesday, December 17th at 10am.
• Doing well in the tournament will count in your favor. But not doing well won't count against you.



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