AWS DeepRacer League 2021 Update #6

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

Lars Circuit (Source: AWS DeepRacer Console)

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

Lars Loop (Source: AWS DeepRacer Console)

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.

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