What’s around the turn in 2021? AWS DeepRacer League announces new divisions, rewards, and community leagues
We’ve got some exciting announcements about the upcoming 2021 racing season. The AWS DeepRacer League is introducing new skill-based Open and Pro racing divisions in March 2021, with five times as many opportunities for racers to win prizes, and recognition for participation and performance. Another exciting new feature coming in 2021 is the expansion of community races into community leagues, enabling organizations and racing enthusiasts to set up their own racing leagues and race with their friends over multiple races.
The AWS DeepRacer League’s 2021 season will introduce new skill-based Open and Pro racing divisions. The new racing divisions include five times as many opportunities for racers of all skill levels to win prizes and recognition for participation and performance. AWS DeepRacer League’s new Open and Pro divisions enable all participants to win prizes by splitting the current Virtual Circuit monthly leaderboard into two skill-based divisions to level the competition, each with their own prizes, while maintaining a high level of competitiveness in the League.
The Open division is where all racers begin their ML journey and rewards participation each month with new vehicle customizations and other rewards. Racers can earn their way into the Pro division each month by finishing in the top 10 percent of time trial results. The Pro division celebrates competition and accomplishment with DeepRacer merchandise, DeepRacer Evo cars, exclusive prizes, and qualification to the Championship Cup at re:Invent 2021.
Similar to previous seasons, winners of the Pro division's monthly race automatically qualify for the Championship Cup with an all-expenses paid trip to re:Invent 2021 for a chance to lift the 2021 Cup, receive a $10,000 machine learning education scholarship, and an F1 Grand Prix experience for two. Starting with the 2021 Virtual Circuit Pre-Season, racers can win multiple prizes each month—including dozens of customizations to personalize your car in the Virtual Circuit (such as car bodies, paint colors, and wraps), several official AWS DeepRacer branded items (such as racing jackets, hats, and shirts), and hundreds of DeepRacer Evo cars, complete with stereo cameras and LiDAR.
With events flourishing around the globe virtually, we’ll soon offer the ability for racers to not only create their own race, but also create multiple races, similar to the monthly Virtual Circuit, with community leagues. Race organizers will be able to set up the whole season, decide on qualification rounds, and use bracket elimination for head-to-head races finalists. The new series of tools enables race organizers to run their own events, including access to racer information, model training details, and logs to engage with their audience and develop learnings from participants. Now, even more organizations, schools, companies, and private groups of friends can use AWS DeepRacer and the community leagues as a fun learning tool to actively develop their ML skills.
Remember to take advantage of the December cost reductions for training and evaluation for AWS DeepRacer by over 70% (from $3.50 to $1 per hour) for the duration of AWS re:Invent 2020. Take advantage of these low rates today and get ready for the AWS DeepRacer League 2021 season. Now is a great time to get rolling with ML and AWS DeepRacer. Watch this page for schedule and video updates all through AWS re:Invent 2020. Let’s get ready to race!