- What's up guys, I'm Maya Bello
and I am super excited to be here today
to kick off the AWS DeepRacer 2020 Championships.
(energetic music)
Ryan, so you were there last year when Sola from Japan,
love her, took home that Championship Cup.
- [Ryan] Ladies and gentlemen,
a round of applause for Sola! (crowd cheers)
- What's gonna be different this time around?
- Hey Maya, yes, there are some differences this year.
Most notably, as we've done all season long
in 2020, we're going all virtual.
And critically, each of the three stages of this tournament
feature completely different race formats.
- 112 developers from all over the world have qualified
to be here, but only one will earn their right
to be called the 2020 champion.
(energetic music)
- Today is the day the new tracks get released,
the new rules, it's very exciting stuff.
I am Daryl Jezierski.
I am a full-stack developer for The Walt Disney Company
and I live in Orlando, Florida.
I've been around aviation my entire life,
whether flying aerobatics or getting my seaplane rating.
It's been a blast.
Griffin, sit.
Griffin's an Australian labradoodle,
pretty smart dog to start out with,
and then just worked on general tricks.
Sit, shake, lay down, (chuckles) belly rubs.
Good boy.
Hopefully, I can figure out object avoidance
and head-to-head before the races start.
- Hi, I'm Cindy from Singapore,
and this is my first time participating in DeepRacer.
From a young age, I've been gaming.
I've always wondered, how is it possible
that someone can create such a dynamic game,
just typing lines of code?
I started dancing.
I was a part of my university dance club.
The style of dance I like the most is jazz funk.
It's basically the same kind of dancing
as the pop culture videos that you see online.
In our company, I was trained with DeepRacer.
I take it as a challenge.
I like the feeling of overtaking someone on the leaderboard,
so I would definitely work hard to achieve that.
- Three, two, one, (claps) action!
- I'm Ray Goh and I work at DBS Bank.
I qualified for the championship
by winning the AWS F1 ProAm race.
- RayG, Ray, congratulations!
- OMG!
As I got started with AWS DeepRacer,
I set myself a goal of being the top in the world.
Part of it was to show my son, Ryan.
- Hello!
- That if you try hard enough,
you can actually be amongst the best in the world.
- Three, two- psych!
- What!
Making it all the way to the top eight
for the Final Grand Prix, that's what everyone's aiming for.
(upbeat music)
♪ Hey ♪
- Hi, my name is James Jennens and I currently live
in Toronto and work for a Canadian bank.
I went to university and studied computer science.
This is where all the work gets done.
I managed to locate an eight year old server
but these things are never-ending,
so (chuckles) I ended up with four machines,
whirring away in the basement,
training with cars and heating the house.
Dining room DeepRacer.
And a number of people have speculated
about my obsession with DeepRacer.
(laughs) I can assure you, everything's fine.
(energetic music)
- Let me show you where I do all my DeepRacer training.
- First order of business is,
let's get a decent time on the Time Trial circuit.
- I've noticed that there are a lot
of right angle parts of the track.
- The thing that caught my attention is the track width.
It's much wider than what we're used to.
- [Daryl] I have quite a bit to do to get ready.
Luckily, we have this warm up round.
- I'm pretty confident that I will do well
on the first round.
- Hopefully, top 15. (chuckles)
- The competition is really, really close.
- My money is on James, obviously.
- Need to keep an eye on Daryl.
- [Ray] To narrow down from a 112 to eight.
- Oh no. (laughs) - Oh man!
It's gonna be absolutely brutal.
(upbeat music)
- Well, after all of the buildup,
it is finally race day, Round 1, the Group Knockouts.
The field of 112 developers has been divided
into eight distinct groups.
They each get three minutes on track
to set the fastest time possible.
And here we go, RogerRabbit, second fastest
of the group in warmups.
Problems here for bluetulipz, as you can see,
stuck on this second box.
DriftKing, yee-haw.
Ooh, went off track.
Move RogerRabbit to P one, 22.413 seconds.
DriftKing put JP Morgan Chase,
in a clean sweep of the top two spots.
The time to beat, 27.2 seconds.
All eyes on JJ. (suspenseful music)
- Come on, fingers crossed.
- The benchmark time might be set right here, right now.
JJ off and running, looking nice and strong here early on.
- (sighs) That's all right.
- That is a sold lap time, 24.062.
Lot of eyes on this run to see what he's capable of.
- Not fast enough.
- Passes the box of doom and into the hairpin.
- Ah man, that was close.
- Personal best, slightly quicker.
23.385, time for one more hot lap.
Love how it dodges those boxes through there.
- Oh no, (chuckles) no!
- [Ryan] Not quite on pace with the personal best,
and then off track in sector three, that will doom this run.
It was on pace.
- Almost, oh well.
- Nevertheless, 23.385, more than enough
for JJ to advance, slots in in third.
So the favorite has moved on, but still a lot up for grabs.
- James Jennens, congratulations
on qualifying for the Bracket of 32.
- Thank you very much, Maya.
I was up against some pretty stiff competition.
I was a little bit nervous about qualifying.
I thought I would, so I guess that's one down.
Two very large hurdles still to go.
- Up next, it is the eighth developer to take to the track
here in group number five, Cindy Lam.
- Should I be able to see the console now?
- One of the favorites coming in.
Let's see what Cindy has for us.
- Let me just refresh my page.
- [Ryan] It's really been coming on strong here recently,
- Is this correct?
- [Ryan] This is something that's relatively new.
She's been a quick study, but problems here
in the hairpin, and this is that box of doom
that we've been talking about.
- I have an issue just now.
- When watching Cindy struggle with this box
and go into it at about the same rate of speed every time,
it does make you wonder if perhaps there might
be an issue with that live control.
- I don't think it's gonna work. (laughs)
- Does look like maybe she's trying to dial back the speed
on the model a little bit and is able to clear it there.
That is crucial now.
- Oh, I don't have much time remaining, though.
- Cindy is in the clear, able to get past the box of doom.
But the time is running out, only 30 seconds left
as Cindy crosses the line.
That first lap will not cut it,
quite obviously, 2.28.082.
In a collision there with the box, time has expired
and it appears that the box of doom
has claimed yet another victim.
Cindy DBS, her tournament has come to a premature end.
- Oh.
(upbeat music)
- Were you freaking out?
(laughs) 'Cause I would be.
- Honestly, the only thing that was going through my mind
is, "Oh, box of doom." (laughing)
The only thing I could think of, honestly.
Because the box of doom was on the inner lane
on a very sharp track, my model is trying to stick
to the center line when it resets.
After hitting the box, you keep trying
to aim to the center of the track.
That's the reason why it keeps trying to hit the box.
I realized that if I were able
to slow down the speed so that it would be able
to cut past the right side of the box.
It took me a while to figure out how to get past it.
Unfortunately, I wasted a lot of time on it,
so I couldn't make a good round afterwards.
It was too late of a discovery.
- Even though you might be feeling
a little bit disappointed, you're a complete boss.
When you come back next year, everyone's gonna
be like, "Watch out for Cindy."
- I will definitely be back next circuit
because I think that I haven't gotten
enough of DeepRacer yet. (laughs)
I have the next one year to prepare myself
for the championships again.
- PolishThunder, Daryl Jezierski on track now.
- Here we go.
- [Ryan] The most important threshold
to clear is kimwooglae's time, 41.679.
- Come on.
(sighs) Oh, those resets are killing me.
Come on, get through this lap, get another one in.
Go, go, go, go, go, go.
- [Ryan] All eyes on this developer from Orlando, Florida.
- Passed the box of doom.
- Coming through sector two.
Have the reset there. - Oh, double reset.
- Prior to this race, Daryl decided he was going
to go back to the drawing board,
scrap the model he had been training and planning on using.
That's a big risk to take.
An unproven model now on the racetrack.
- Come on, go, go, go, go, go.
Oh, I'm in.
- 31.477.
That round 32 birth is secure.
- Hi Daryl, congratulations on making it to the Round of 32.
How do you feel?
- Yeah, relieved and now, onto the next round.
We'll see what happens.
I'd love to see Ray, myself, and James in the final.
- RayG about to take to the track now.
Here in group number seven, the time to beat
to be the top of the group, a 43.888 from Ayana.
Several developers that we've seen already
really have trouble with the obstacle avoidance,
some contact with those boxes.
Hopefully, that's a pitfall that Ray can avoid.
- So I watched Cindy race in the other group,
and she was defeated by the box of doom. (chuckles)
(Cindy groans)
This model is for Cindy.
It's to avenge her.
- Three minutes on the clock and the lights are out.
RayG's Group Knockouts race is underway.
Clean through sector one here, RayG from Singapore.
- Come on.
- Has done so much within the DeepRacer community,
and opens up with a purple first sector.
- Sweet.
- No resets as of yet, as well, that's very impressive.
That kind of consistency typically is indicative
of a well-trained model, so as RayG comes around
to start what should be his final flying lap, look at that.
No resets as of yet for Ray.
(exhales sharply) Maybe I spoke too soon.
Look at that, right into the box there.
First reset up the race so far.
- Commentator's curse.
- Sorry about, Ray.
30 seconds remaining. - Come on.
- [Ryan] Coming around now to complete the third sector
and to the top of the leaderboard.
- Yeah! (laughs)
- RayG a best time, 27.617, fast enough to make it
to the top of this group and lock himself
into a spot in the Round of 32.
- RayG, you just finished racing, you did so well.
How do you feel?
- More relieved than anything else.
I was bent on conquering the box of doom.
I wasn't sure whether the model would work
because this is a model which I just trained overnight.
- Wow!
- And I took a gamble and submitted this untested model.
Instead of telling it how to go around the track,
I just trained it to figure things out.
Thankfully, it worked. (chuckles)
- [Ryan] Congratulations to the top 32 qualifiers
and all the developers who took part in the first round
of the AWS DeepRacer 2020 Championships.
- In our next episode, these 32 survivors will go
Head to Head in the bracket of 32, but only eight
will qualify for the Grand Prix Final.
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