Tank Battles > Home

Last update: 2007-06-20 - pre-alpha release updated

This project is an effort to build a 3D simulator for teaching robot artificial inteligence. Tank Battles is heavily influenced by IBM's Alphaworks Robocode, but differs from the former in that it adds the complexity of a fully 3D scene with realistic physics. Instead of relying on predictable, almost deterministic, movement code, as found in robocode, one has to implement tank behavior by using methods that depends on the physics engine simulation to complete. This aproach makes Tank Battles chalenges closer to real world robots coding.

The current status is pre-alpha. The project is under heavy development and we are planning an alpha release for the next two weeks.

Main features are (not restricted to):

• 3D scene sensors
Rotation and position of the tank
Radar detection of nearby tanks
Computer images for getting the tanks front and rear vision (for computer vision algorithms)
• Complex terrain, with valleys and obstacles
• Realistic rigid-body physics simulation
Tank movement achieved by accelerating wheels
Static and dynamic (movable) obstacles
• Open source client-server implementation
Headless simulator can be used for fast loading and research
High performance 3D client for visualizing the simulation
• Fully customizable via XML mission configuration files
Tank controllers, as in robocode, inherit from a base implementation
Mission implementation, with full access to scene objects, allowing custom mission modes.

Tank Battles is fully implemented in Java, relying on jMonkeyEngine for 3D visuals and jMEPhysics2 for simulation. XML Parsing is made with Spring core libraries.

Tank Battles is licenced under GPL.