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). 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 are expected to work as a team of 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.

The schedule is as follows.

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• Project Proposal due on Thursday, March 2nd at 12:30pm.
    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. I prefer double-sided printing. Make sure you proofread and spell-check.

The proposal should be written with the goal of convincing us that what you are proposing to do is interesting and non-trivial (though not necessarily completely original - see below). 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.

It is completely legitimate to propose to do something based on something you read about provided that you are going to do the coding yourself. Just make sure to acknowledge any ideas (and code) that you borrow and be sure to clearly identify what you are going to do.

Based on experience from previous years, many of you will be tempted to do something using machine learning. That's fine. But be prepared for it to be on the frustrating side. It often takes a lot of infrastructure to get ML approaches working. My advice to those of you who want to try learning is to think carefully up front about what the inputs and outputs of the learning task will be. Proposals that say nothing more than "I propose to have a team learn using [insert-ML-technique]" will not lead to very constructive feedback. If you're going to use ML, propose to do so on some specific component of your team and try not to be too ambitious.

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• Progress Report due on Thursday, April 6th at 12:30pm.
      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. 
• 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).

To turn in your logfiles, use the turnin program with grader "nate" 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.

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• Your final Team due on Tuesday, May 2nd at 12:30pm.
     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 "nate" 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

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• Final Report due on Thursday, May 4th at 12:30pm.
         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. All writing should be your own -- even if you are describing a component produced by your partner.
  • Reports must have at least 3 citations with full bibliographic references, including at least 2 to non-RoboCup-related papers.
  • Be very clear about what code you've used from other sources, if any. Clear citations are essential. Failure to credit ideas and code from external sources is cheating.
  • Make sure you evaluate both the good and bad points of your approach.
  • Show results of at least one experiment evaluating some aspect of or your entire approach, preferably showing error bars or some sort of statistical measure of the significance. Even if you didn't accomplish your goal, evaluate what you did do.
  • If any parameteres are mentioned in the report, be sure to mention how you arrived at their values. Was it the first thing you tried? Trial and error? Roughly how many trials? etc.
  • Remember to proofread and spell-check!
  The final report should be at least 8 pages double spaced. To the extent possible, it should be written as if it were a conference paper such as the ones you read for class. 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.
  
  

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• TOURNAMENT on Tuesday, May 16th at 1pm in ACES 2.402!
• Doing well in the tournament will count in your favor. But not doing well won't count against you.
• Attendance at the tournament is mandatory. Students will give informal oral descriptions of their approaches. Plan on talking for about 5 minutes and answering any questions from the audience. No slides are needed.