This looks like a lot of fun but I'm surprised to see this in Java. Nothing against Java, the JVM, or the ecosystem surrounding it; I expected to see a REST interface, or something similar.

Having read Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/), I think it would be a neat side project to abstract as much out of the intelligent agent model from Chapter 2 as "makes sense" and see to what extent you can allow interfaces from any programming language.

That's funny, this looks a lot like google's AI Challenge, http://ants.aichallenge.org/, which allowed you to write your solution in multiple different languages. I wonder why they narrowed down to just java?

I don't have much experience in java, and don't want to get just for this project. Although I would love to participate... This is my dream competition.

Seems weird to see a coding competition with only one language available.

Maybe you'll be able to improve that in the future?

EDIT: It would be great to have python available. But an API that any language could use would be the best way to go as the other comment mentions.

Very excited to participate. I loved the Google AI challenges and have been eager to do another AI contest.

I just wish there were more AI contests out there, they are some of the most fun I have programming.