In 2020 AWS DeepRacer League Finals are going full virtual. There are three rounds:
- Group qualifiers – Object Avoidance on European Seaside Circuit track
- Knock-outs – Head-to-Head racing of top 32 to select the top 8
- Grand Prix – Simultaneous race of top 8 racers for the fame and glory
Read on for details, times and where to watch the finals live!
Round 1
The racers have been divided into 8 groups:
Each racer will participate in a race in their group where they will have three minutes to make the most of their models. There are unlimited resets and three seconds time penalty for each one. Racers will use a special final race console which allows them to change the speeds in their model from 50% to 150% of original values. This is a tricky tool: having a fast model speeding it up may lead to bad results, but it can give a bit of a boost to the slow ones but those also need to be careful as their models might not be good at predicting actions for higher speeds and they might react too slow. One case where it is extremely handy is when one gets stuck in front of a box. Switching to 50% appears to give enough time for the car to avoid the box. If it know how to avoid it!
Results: Top 4 in each group progress to round two for the knock-outs.
Live feed: You can watch the group races on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/awsdeepracer
Times in UTC:
- Group 1: 2nd December 1:00 am UTC
- Group 2: 2nd December 3:00 am UTC
- Group 3: 2nd December 2:00 pm UTC
- Group 4: 2nd December 5:00 pm UTC
- Group 5: 3rd December 2:00 am UTC
- Group 6: 3rd December 2:00 pm UTC
- Group 7: 4th December 1:00 am UTC
- Group 8: 4th December 3:00 am UTC
Times in PST:
- Group 1: 1st December 5:00 pm PST
- Group 2: 1st December 7:00 pm PST
- Group 3: 2nd December 6:00 am PST
- Group 4: 2nd December 9:00 am PST
- Group 5: 2nd December 6:00 pm PST
- Group 6: 3rd December 6:00 am PST
- Group 7: 3rd December 5:00 pm PST
- Group 8: 3rd December 7:00 pm PST
Times in AEDT:
- Group 1: 2nd December 12:00 pm AEDT
- Group 2: 2nd December 2:00 pm AEDT
- Group 3: 3rd December 1:00 am AEDT
- Group 4: 3rd December 4:00 am AEDT
- Group 5: 3rd December 1:00 pm AEDT
- Group 6: 4th December 1:00 am AEDT
- Group 7: 4th December 12:00 pm AEDT
- Group 8: 4th December 2:00 pm AEDT
A little helper tool to get the times right: https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/
Round 2
Round two follows the pattern that we’ve seen at the virtual head-to-head races in the final knock-outs round: 32 racers are placed in brackets and the winner progresses to next round. One difference though: only two rounds! This way eight racers are selected which will progress into round three.
Time: 4th December
This will not be available live. We will learn the results soon after the race.
Round 3
If you’ve been following the DeepRacer League this year, you might recall that May was special: we were racing on Barcelona track together with F1 racers Daniel Ricciardo and Tatiana Calderón. The final round of H2H was also different – twelve competitors raced each other together on track:
This time it will be eight racers racing in the final which will be presented at the start of Werner Vogel’s Key Note.
Time: 15 December 2020 3:00 pm UTC (7:00 am PST)
Watch live: https://virtual.awsevents.com/media/1_jocx2wyq
So tune in and enjoy the races! Also watch this space as we prepare a compilation of interesting sessions about AWS DeepRacer and other AWS ML Devices.
As always you are very welcome to join the AWS ML Community where we share our learning experiences and help each other (not only with DeepRacer): http://join.deepracing.io