RARS

{{Short description|Open source 3D racing simulator}}

{{about||the gene|RARS (gene)|the syndrome|Refractory anemia with ring sideroblasts}}

File:Rars races in Hockenheim - Cars overtaking.jpg on a curve. Overtaking was one of the most challenging parts of RARS competition, as touching another car usually caused an accident.]]

RARS is an acronym for Robot Auto Racing Simulator. It is an open source 3D racing simulator. RARS is designed to enable pre-programmed AI drivers to race against one another. RARS was used as the base for TORCS.[https://books.google.com/books?id=29N9AwAAQBAJ&dq=rars+torcs&pg=PA99 Evolved to Win] by Moshe Sipper, {{ISBN|978-1-4709-7283-7}} (2011) It was used as an example in the book Intelligent Information Processing and Web Mining by Mieczysław Kłopotek.[https://books.google.com/books?id=1E7UlCr6p5gC&dq=%22Robot+Auto+Racing+Simulator%22&pg=PA342 Intelligent Information Processing and Web Mining] by Mieczysław Kłopotek, page 342

It was a monthly on-going challenge for practitioners of artificial intelligence and real-time adaptive optimal control.[https://rars.sourceforge.net/] on sourceforge.net It consists of:

• a simulation of the physics of cars racing on a track
• a graphic display of the race
• a separate control program (robot "driver") for each car

Each participant could submit a robot (a file written in C++) which controlled the car and competed to win the race.

• The input was the road and cars in front of it.
• The output was the driver wheel and driver accelerator position.

RARS was downloaded from its main repository on SourceForge.net between 2000 and May 2017 almost 100,000 times.[https://sourceforge.net/projects/rars/files/stats/timeline?dates=2000-01-10+to+2017-05-25 stats] on sourceforge.net