More than 100 students from universities and colleges across Vietnam participated in the finale of the BUILD-IT AWS DeepRacer League - an autonomous racing, driven by machine learning, held at Cao Thang Technical College on March 14, 2023. This is an activity under the project "Building University-Industry Learning and Development through Innovation and Technology (BUILD-IT) of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), implemented by Arizona State University, and Amazon Web Services.

In the BUILD-IT AWS DeepRacer League, participants learn to build reinforcement learning (RL) models to race on an AWS DeepRacer device and in the cloud-based 3D racing simulator.

At the final round, the 10 best contestants took turns to run their cars on a simulated track like F1 races. The judges compared the results based on the shortest time to complete a full circuit.

Student Le Van Tam (right) finished in the runner-up position in the AWS DeepRacer League - an autonomous racing league powered by machine learning 

Le Van Tam - a 3rd year student from Faculty of Information Technology, LHU shared that it took him a long time to optimize machine learning technology for his car model.

With the DeepRacer, Tam wrote an algorithm to train his autonomous car to identify and eventually follow a racetrack. When it learns to run in the right lane and at the right speed, it will get bonus points, otherwise it will receive a points deduction. Just like that, after 25 hours of training, Tam's car could drive itself smoothly and find the most reasonable way to run in each segment during the race.

Tam peformed his part at the finale

As a result, Le Van Tam, class 20CT111 excellently took Second place with the result of 11.938 seconds.

After the final of AWS DeepRacer League in Vietnam, the organizers will continue to look for potential racers to compete in the US.

After the final of the AWS DeepRacer League in Vietnam, the organizers will continue to look for potential racers to compete with other representatives from the world's leading countries, expected to take place in the US this year. 

Tam in a memorable photo with his lecturer and friends