Amazon Web Services (AWS) is finally delivering on the DeepRacer machines it has been promoting since earlier this year. AWS DeepRacer is an autonomous 1/18th scale race car designed to test Reinforcement Learning (RL) models by racing on a physical track. Mine was ordered back in July 2019 and with several changed delivery times it looks like the latest version it will be arriving soon to the average Joe this month in November 2019. I really hope there are no more delays.
Gearing up for the holidays there’s a lot going on and I certainly think that there’s room and time to be made in the schedule for an unboxing and an initial run at getting the DeepRacer configured, models deployed, and off to the races. There appears to be a lots of excitement popping up around the AWS DeepRacer League as time is getting nearer for AWS Invent:2019. Alexandra Bush wrote an article on some of the promo going on around the release of DeepRacer to the masses and the challenges.
The technology of Intel, AWS SageMaker and RoboMaker, and OpenVINO are really driving the ability for having fun and learning. The number of AWS services in use to build, train, and evaluate the models used on the track are not overly intense but core knowledge of AWS (S3, etc.) and ML are going to suit any better than starting with DeepRacer with no background.
But that is also part of the process which I think AWS wants to instill – go learn and go have fun regardless of your current level. Go make something!
