GECCO 2023 Space Optimisation Competition (SPoC)
Here you can find the information you need in order to take part in the GECCO 2023 Space Optimisation Competition (SpOC) organised by the Advanced Concepts Team (ACT).
SpOC 2: Settling New Mars
In the distant future, humanity has travelled across the galaxies, setting foot on numerous planets and establishing colonies on these new worlds. Yet, the quest for a new home persists, and finally, a glimmer of hope appears on the horizon. After years of tireless exploration, a promising planet is discovered in a faraway solar system.
Dubbed "New Mars" for its striking resemblance to the red planet, the call goes out to send twelve motherships hurtling across the cosmos to explore and settle this new world. The stakes are high, and the challenges are great, but the lure of a new beginning is too strong to resist.
Greetings, SpOC competitors! The time has come to unleash your innovative minds and contribute to humanity's New Mars settlement effort.
Competition Structure
The New Mars settlement program is an ambitious undertaking, consisting of three distinct phases, each with its own unique set of design challenges. The first phase involves the travel to the planet itself, while the second phase focuses on the deployment of a state-of-the-art telecommunications infrastructure. Finally, in the third phase, settlers will recover experimental data from the planet's surface with the help of advanced morphing rovers. Each phase will be tied to an optimisation challenge that SpOC participants will have to solve.
1. Travel through the Wormhole Transportation Network
The motherships, each carrying hundreds of settlers and all the necessary resources to establish a new colony, embark on their journey, travelling for years through the vast emptiness of space. To make this journey possible, the settlers use a wormhole transportation network. This technology allows the motherships to traverse enormous distances in a matter of years, dramatically reducing the time and energy required for interstellar travel. The settlers face a unique challenge in their journey to New Mars, not only because they will travel vast distances in space, but also because they will be travelling through time. Due to the nature of the wormhole network, the motherships will arrive at their destination at different times relative to each other, and it will be a significant challenge to coordinate their efforts and ensure that they arrive together at the planet's orbit.
2. Deploy Quantum Communications Constellations
Finally, after a long and perilous journey, the motherships reach New Mars. As the settlement effort on the planet begins, one of the key challenges is establishing reliable communication channels between the planet's surface and the motherships in orbit. To tackle this challenge, teams of engineers have been working tirelessly to develop and deploy quantum communications constellations in the surrounding space. These constellations, composed of advanced quantum satellites, will enable the settlers to transmit data at unparalleled speeds and security. With this breakthrough technology, the settlers can focus on exploring and settling this new world, knowing they have a reliable link back to their home solar systems.
3. Surface Exploration with Morphing Rovers
With the communications network established, scientific exploration of New Mars is now a top priority for the settlers. To achieve this goal, a series of surface experiments were conducted, producing vital physical samples that must be quickly recovered. Advanced morphing rovers will be sent to the surface to collect the samples, these state-of-the-art autonomous rovers have the unique ability to change their morphology between several programmed forms, allowing them to be adapted in advance for the terrain they will encounter. Top engineers and scientists have been assembled to design a morphing rover for the new planet. Equipped with advanced sensors and communication systems, the optimal morphing rover will be able to traverse even the most challenging areas of New Mars, bringing back data that will aid in the settlers' efforts to understand and ultimately thrive on this new world.
Scope of the Competition
Your mission is to tackle up to three optimization challenges associated with the design of the three phases of the New Mars settlement initiative. Starting from 1 April 2022, you will have three months to tackle these challenges and compete for the top spot on the SpOC leaderboard.
Detailed technical descriptions for the three challenges to be solved will be made available on the Optimise platform from the same date.
We wish you the best of luck and may the most deserving team emerge victorious!
Competition rules
Here are the guidelines to ensure a fair and exciting challenge:
- Your objective is to propose and implement metaheuristic algorithms to solve the three proposed optimisation problems.
- In order to validate your solutions, we will provide you with Python validation code for each of the three problems. This code includes problem definitions in the Pygmo user-defined problem (UDP) format, examples of solutions, and visualisation tools.
- You have until 30 June 2023 to submit your entries via the dedicated portal Optimise.
- Based on performance, the top ten entries for each problem will be awarded points on the overall SpOC leaderboard. The best team will receive ten points, the second-best nine points, and so on until the tenth-best team receives one point.
- The team with the most points on the overall leaderboard at the end of the competition, on July 1st, 2023, will be declared the winner.
- Please comply with our basic code of honour. The ACT reserves the right to exclude users from the competition if they abuse the evaluation system.
We wish all participants the best of luck and are excited to see what you accomplish!
Timeline
NOTE: The submission portal will remain open after 30 June 2023. Submissions received after that date will not be taken into consideration for the competition, but they will still appear on the leaderboard.
How to submit
- The competition will be hosted on the Optimise platform developed by the Advanced Concepts Team. Teams will need to register online on the platform, and solution entries will need to be submitted via Optimise for validation.
- Submission of papers or attendance to GECCO 2023 is not a requirement for taking part in SpOC.
Contact
We will be using GitHub as our hub for communication with competitors. Our primary means of communication will be the Discussions feature on our repository.
Please use this feature to ask any questions you may have about the challenges or to exchange information with us.
For any urgent matters regarding the competition please reach out to us: