amazon launches self-driving toy car and a brand new competitive sports

amazon web services is launching a self-driving toy car that hopes to encourage a community of developers interested in machine learning. the AWS deepracer, a radio-controlled, four-wheel drive, is trained using reinforcement learning, a form of AI which means it will learn to drive better through trial and error. it’s about 1/18th the size of an actual car and will cost $400, although currently being offered at a preorder price of $249.

images courtesy of amazon

the objective is for developers to program the AWS deepracer to drive itself using amazon sagemaker, amazon’s artificial intelligence service. onboard the toy car is an intel atom processor, a 4 megapixel camera with 1080p resolution that has a heat map to detect obstacles, wifi access, and enough battery to last about 2 hours. the atom processor runs ubuntu 16.04 LTS, ROS (robot operating system), and the intel openvino^™computer vision toolkit.

developers can test-drive the car using a 3D simulator giving developers the chance to virtually drive their car on a collection of tracks to determine whether their algorithm is good enough. when they are happy they can plug the algorithm into the car and race it for real. AWS is launching the deepracer league, an autonomous racing league that will hold matches at amazon cloud events throughout next year. there developers can compete against each other by racing cars to see whose algorithms lead to the fastest race times. winners and top scorers will advance to the AWS deepracer 2019 championship cup at re:invent 2019.