The race is not slowing down. Let’s have a look at how the competitors are doing in April.
AWS DeepRacer
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DeepRacer News
AWS DeepRacer League March Finale
The final race will take place on the 8th of April at 5:30 pm PST (9th of April 1:30 am BST, 9th of April 10:30 pm AEDT). It will be presented live on the main AWS Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/aws.
First in-person meetup of 2021
If you’re from Indiana or generally close to Fort Wayne, do join the AWS Hero Alex Schultz for the first in-person DeepRacer meetup of the year on the 28th of April. Read more in a separate blog post.
AWS DeepRacer Underground is back
Most of us are happy for Alex but not as lucky. David Smith and Jon Myer from AWS are here to help us experience the real action with AWS DeepRacer Undergroud – live-streamed physical events where you can push the DeepRacer to its limit and get the track manager to fall over trying to save the day and the car. Qualifiers are open, live race is on the 14th of April. Read more in a separate blog post.
April races
This month we’re facing the Lars Loop and Lars Circuit, inspired by the Thunderhill Raceway Park in California. Lars is racing as Duckworth in the league and is a very active community member, maintaining the local training stack and contributing to many other community projects.
Pro Division
Race info:
- 59.233 meters long
- 107 centimetres wide
- Head-to-bot format with four bot cars cruising at 1 m/s without lane changes
- Racers are trying to complete three laps
- Each collision and each driving off the track results in a five seconds penalty
- Top 16 go on into a live race which will be streamed on Twitch to fight for places in the League Finals and AWS DeepRacer EVOs
Let’s see the stats for the whole group:
All submissions Update time: 2021-04-05 22:00:00 UTC Racers: 59 Total submission attempts: 4791 Best total time: 01:05.999 by JJ Mean total time: 03:16.771847458 Best lap: 00:21.659 by JJ Mean best lap: 00:57.953186441 Mean average lap: 01:05.590338983
Over 30% of eligible racers have already started the race in the Pro Division. The gap between mean and best total time suggests that there’s quite some catching up to do and it does tend to get smaller with time, but JJ is surely not done yet.
Top 20 submissions Update time: 2021-04-05 22:00:00 UTC Racers: 20 Total submission attempts: 4448 Best total time: 01:05.999 by JJ Mean total time: 02:07.644150 Best lap: 00:21.659 by JJ Mean best lap: 00:37.735150 Mean average lap: 00:42.547750
In the top twenty the gap is also pretty big but we’ve only seen first five days of racing so far. Also, many of top racers are focused on the upcoming March Finale. That said almost 4.5K out of 4.8K submissions have come from the top 20 racers. Let’s have a quick look at who’s occupying the top of the list at the moment:
| Rank | Racer | Total Time | Avg Lap | Best Lap | Resets | Submissions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | JJ | 01:05.999 | 00:21.999 | 00:21.659 | 0 | 52 |
| 2 | Jochem | 01:26.674 | 00:28.891 | 00:24.712 | 2 | 225 |
| 3 | Rober | 01:34.951 | 00:31.650 | 00:28.113 | 2 | 8 |
| 4 | kimmizian | 01:36.861 | 00:32.287 | 00:31.466 | 0 | 891 |
| 5 | AJM-Model-1 | 01:52.042 | 00:37.347 | 00:32.694 | 5 | 11 |
| 6 | SorinB | 01:56.797 | 00:38.932 | 00:33.264 | 3 | 11 |
| 7 | PolishThunder | 01:57.478 | 00:39.159 | 00:29.211 | 8 | 986 |
| 8 | atnmn | 01:59.835 | 00:39.945 | 00:33.815 | 6 | 46 |
| 9 | kimwooglae | 02:04.860 | 00:41.620 | 00:37.493 | 8 | 785 |
| 10 | Maikel | 02:04.900 | 00:41.633 | 00:36.953 | 9 | 65 |
| 11 | Joffe | 02:07.502 | 00:42.500 | 00:35.659 | 9 | 2 |
| 12 | Duckworth | 02:13.736 | 00:44.578 | 00:42.685 | 10 | 2 |
| 13 | gill-bates | 02:15.727 | 00:45.242 | 00:39.003 | 3 | 23 |
| 14 | think | 02:16.061 | 00:45.353 | 00:42.723 | 7 | 836 |
| 15 | Mentaiko-DevelopersIO | 02:25.646 | 00:48.548 | 00:44.611 | 14 | 449 |
| 16 | BoogieTimeProductions | 02:40.057 | 00:53.352 | 00:49.053 | 8 | 42 |
| 17 | Deepak-dpk | 02:42.345 | 00:54.115 | 00:48.195 | 12 | 1 |
| 18 | drunken-monkey | 02:42.954 | 00:54.318 | 00:50.627 | 7 | 2 |
| 19 | ABaykov | 02:43.590 | 00:54.530 | 00:46.188 | 14 | 9 |
| 20 | Groovy-DNPds | 02:44.868 | 00:54.956 | 00:46.579 | 11 | 2 |
This looks like a rather calm start for this month’s races but I wouldn’t like to sit in places 12-16 in the last week of this month. We’ve all seen ho AJM-Model-1 got knocked out of the finalists group in the last three days of March. Now three lucky ones will not compete in the finals this month, sure, but if you’ve been following the Open Division you’ll remember the CGI NYCU students who visited in the last week of March and topped the ranking with one to five submissions like it was no biggie. There’s still a question of how they will cope with the bots when they show up but to take part in the live stream I definitely recommend you aim for the top ten.
Open Division
Race info:
- 41.551 meters long
- 107 centimetres wide
- Simpler and shorter than the pro track but still pretty challenging with a variety of straights and turns
- Time Trial format
- Competitors need to complete three laps and total time counts for their classification
- Each off-track results in five seconds penalty.
- Racers fight for qualification to the Pro group which is won by the top 10%
- They will also receive a Pro Welcoming Kit which is a bit of a mystery (We will hopefully know soon as the prize notifications have been sent out for the March races)
Let’s take a look at the overall stats:
All submissions Update time: 2021-04-05 22:00:00 UTC Racers: 120 Total submission attempts: 668 Best total time: 01:32.056 by test0123 Mean total time: 03:49.939125 Best lap: 00:26.209 by egRacer Mean best lap: 01:10.399116667 Mean average lap: 01:16.646058333
120 racers in the first five days are a pretty decent group. It’s hard to say much about their results at the moment so let’s have a look at the top twenty in specific:
Top 20 submissions Update time: 2021-04-05 22:00:00 UTC Racers: 20 Total submission attempts: 330 Best total time: 01:32.056 by test0123 Mean total time: 02:19.554050 Best lap: 00:26.209 by egRacer Mean best lap: 00:42.689150 Mean average lap: 00:46.517700
92 seconds are far from what can be achieved on this track so I would expect some nice improvements in the upcoming week. The best lap owner is in the third spot mainly due to the amount of resets in the best performance. Stability appears to be a common problem after five days of racing. Let’s have a look at the standings:
| Rank | Racer | Total Time | Avg Lap | Best Lap | Resets | Submissions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | test0123 | 01:32.056 | 00:30.685 | 00:28.267 | 1 | 5 |
| 2 | badger | 01:35.643 | 00:31.881 | 00:27.540 | 2 | 90 |
| 3 | egRacer | 01:38.186 | 00:32.728 | 00:26.209 | 3 | 90 |
| 4 | LuckyMan | 01:56.644 | 00:38.881 | 00:31.348 | 7 | 7 |
| 5 | DR-1 | 01:58.630 | 00:39.543 | 00:39.201 | 6 | 3 |
| 6 | Vinay17 | 02:01.045 | 00:40.348 | 00:34.336 | 9 | 15 |
| 7 | KK-SHAHNUR-HS | 02:12.632 | 00:44.210 | 00:41.539 | 4 | 10 |
| 8 | elecman | 02:18.609 | 00:46.203 | 00:38.206 | 8 | 1 |
| 9 | GT-Racing | 02:26.854 | 00:48.951 | 00:47.294 | 6 | 37 |
| 10 | DitchDigger | 02:28.696 | 00:49.565 | 00:49.326 | 0 | 3 |
| 11 | KK-HAIKAL-H | 02:28.702 | 00:49.567 | 00:48.723 | 0 | 3 |
| 12 | Manna-Sonali-A603818-V1 | 02:30.448 | 00:50.149 | 00:45.072 | 9 | 22 |
| 13 | xiaojuruo | 02:32.229 | 00:50.743 | 00:45.546 | 15 | 1 |
| 14 | TimberMG | 02:34.204 | 00:51.401 | 00:45.540 | 3 | 15 |
| 15 | X-Zhao | 02:36.807 | 00:52.269 | 00:49.252 | 8 | 1 |
| 16 | HasrizamKKCM | 02:37.524 | 00:52.508 | 00:51.805 | 0 | 5 |
| 17 | test0401 | 02:39.906 | 00:53.302 | 00:51.300 | 0 | 5 |
| 18 | sawaD-MHI | 02:46.739 | 00:55.579 | 00:51.277 | 2 | 1 |
| 19 | OPEN-AMIR-HBNBH | 02:46.844 | 00:55.614 | 00:49.791 | 12 | 1 |
| 20 | nikster | 02:48.683 | 00:56.227 | 00:52.211 | 8 | 15 |
We can see many new racers in the group. I’m curious about test0123 and test0401 – could it be a team or multiple accounts associated with each other? We might find out soon.