The Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation (APU) and Amazon Web Services (AWS) collaborated to host an innovative event – the AWS DeepRacer Competition 2023. This competition invited 215 teams comprising 535 future data scientists and engineers and granted them the opportunity to learn Reinforcement Learning (RL) and Machine Learning (ML) in an entertaining, practical way.
The AWS DeepRacer is an autonomous race car that is powered by AWS, designed to teach users how to train RL models, build autonomous driving applications, and test the models by racing them on a physical track. AWS experts conducted console walkthroughs for the contestants and gave hands-on ML workshops too. The semi-finalists attended a two-hour coaching workshop with AWS experts and submitted their lap times. In the Grand Finale 10 finalists took part in intense two-hour races, with three teams coming out on the top – “The Cloud Champs”, “Machine Meowers”, and “Common Emitter”.
Julian Lau, Head of ASEAN Growth Markets, Worldwide Public Sector at AWS, expressed how entertaining the event was: “AI and ML are the most transformative technologies and we are very glad to have partnered with APU to offer its students the chance to discover ML and cloud technology through AWS’s DeepRacer League. We aspire to motivate APU students to create something outstanding with the help of such advanced tools”.
The winners improved their skills by researching and exploring others’ results. For example, Tang Jian Shiun, one of the champions and Bachelor of Computer Science (Hons) Intelligent Systems student commented on the importance of stability: “We stressed on the steadiness of the car rather than its speed and this was what eventually deserved us first place”. Chong Jack Pang and his teammates attributed their success to the knowledge from the APU program. “Common Emitter” team completed their journey to third place thanks to their proficiency in Python coding.
Gurpardeep Singh, COO of APU, praised the excitement of the contestants for their learning journey: “APU-AWS DeepRacer Competition 2023 provided its members with the know-how to apply Reinforcement Learning and Machine Learning, as well as construct physical models from the virtual models. This is an essential part of preparing the students for their future profession”.
APU is committed to inspiring innovation and excellence in technology. The AWS DeepRacer Competition 2023 has more than proven that with over 200 teams, 10 finalists and an amazing sense of enthusiasm among the students. Moreover, every finalist team was provided with 30 hours of simulation training and 5GB of model storage to practice Reinforcement Learning. It has certainly been a success and an encouraging step towards future competitions leveraging the advancements in Machine Learning and the Cloud.
