Defence data scientists and engineers come close to world record time in a DeepRacer artificial intelligence challenge
The participants, from the Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), had three days to transform a ‘dumb’ car into one which could navigate a course using artificial intelligence (AI).
The challenge aimed to demonstrate the benefits of reinforcement learning and the differences between the virtual and physical environments.
Dstl organiser David said
The AWS DeepRacer Re-invent 2018 track, sized 26 feet long by 17 feet wide, included twists and turns designed to put the newly trained cars through their paces.
In just three days the 1/18 scale small cars, ‘trained’ by participants using reinforcement learning, had managed to complete the track in just under eight seconds - within a second of the world record speed.
The top virtual time was 7.865 seconds while the top track time was 8.069 seconds.
The event was hosted by Dstl in conjunction with Amazon Web Services (AWS) at Porton Science Park.
During the event participants had to deal with physical factors that they would not encounter in an online simulation such as lighting and roughness of the track.
AWS account manager Shea Hindman said:
Dstl participant Nick said: