Aaron wrote:

> The problem is a fun-sounding one:
> 
> "The challenge is to implement a program that acts as a player in a
> multi-player robot game. Contributed programs will play against each 
> other in a tournament, which will determine the winner of the 
> programming contest."

Man, this one is a doosey...

It combines: 

Cybernetics,
AI  (Since the problem alone is NP, it becomes an AI problem).
Game theory,
Path finding
and network programming. 

If I had three months to research this and get myself a working
develment platform with a test server I would take a whack at it but the
five-day time period for this problem is just insane. 

-- 
Latancy is your enemy.
Bandwidth is your friend.
http://users.rcn.com/alangrimes/