Author: Adam Conway

In the past 5 months we have seen performance improve greatly in our 1/10 scale “fastest lap” race format.  When we started out cars were traveling about 1 m/s with the most recent races we see cars traveling at 3 m/s, with the fastest human drivers averaging around 8 m/s.  With the next set of innovations,  we expect cars to move into the 5-6 m/s range, closing the gap with human drivers.  While this speed improvement does require introduction of new methods, we will be moving into a period of refinement rather than invention.  So it is time to shake things up.    

In order to encourage the next set of innovations,  we are going change up the rules and lay out a timeline for wheel to wheel racing.  This will happen over a course of months with intermediate milestones.  To simplify this objective we will be using AR tags (specifically AprilTags) to identify the cars.  This focuses the challenge on localization, and path planning rather than vehicle identification.  Finally for those who want to focus solely on single lap performance, we will continue to have the single lap race.

There will be two races for the 1/10 scale cars:

The first race will be a single timed lap, shortest lap time wins, gets pole position and first seed for the wheel to wheel race.  This is similar to our existing race.

The second race will be a wheel to wheel event and will race two cars at a time, if there are more than two cars participating the cars will be put into a seeded ladder.  Each car will have a 10×10 cm 36h11 AprilTag attached to the back of the car vertically and within 3cm of the ground.   Tags must remain vertical within +/- 10 degrees during the race.  Minor collisions are to be expected, however a car that causes a collision that prevents a competitor from completing the race is grounds for forfeit or re-race as determined by the track master or other designated judge.  The wheel to wheel race will be 3 laps.

Timeline:

• May 13 race:  We will have AprilTags around to show to people and Andy Sloane will have a tech demo and sample code ready.
• June Race:  In addition to our standard race, we will run an initial exhibition race where we will put stationary AprilTags on the track as obstacles.  Cars that can avoid the obstacles and get around the track at the fastest speed win.
• July Race: Exhibition Wheel to Wheel!  This will be our first Wheel to wheel race.  Racers should be able to identify other cars and avoid them, but it is also a chance to test code and share techniques.
• August Race: First real wheel to wheel race!

Note: Timeline may be adjusted based how well we hit our milestones.

Request for comments.  Please go to the DIYRobocars forum to discuss and comment.  These rules are not locked in stone and I would like feedback.  Please try to provide feedback soon, I would like to close on this by 5/15

Last weekend DIYRobocars held the biggest race of its short history.  We raced our 1/10th scale cars (and smaller) at ThunderHill Raceways as part of the Self Racing Cars event where some raced full sized cars and one go-cart on the 2 mile ThunderHill West track.   Among the 3 classes of cars at the event between Self Racing Cars and DIYRobocars, I am the track master for what may be the most active track at the event, the 1/10th scale competition.   Our modest 60 meter long track laid out with tape in the parking lot had 12 cars of which 7 completed fully autonomous laps.  While all used vision the cars were based upon 5 different software stacks (2 based on OpenCV, one on a depth camera and 2 different CNN implementations).  While most racers are from the greater Bay Area, we had racers join us from all over North America including Miami, Toronto and San Diego.

After this huge milestone it is worth reflecting on the short time that the DIYRobocars league has been in existence.  The 1/10th leave kicked off with a hackathon organized by Chris Anderson at Carl Bass’ Warehouse on November 13 2016.  As I look back on the last 4.5 months it is amazing what we have accomplished.  Here are some stats:

• 23 total cars built
• 15 cars have raced 
• 10 cars have completed an autonomous lap
• 21s – Fastest autonomous time
• 8s – Fastest Human time.  
• And there is much more to come…

In addition times have consistently improved even though we have added new cars and racers as can be seen in the chart below

Compared to Self Racing Cars (full sized cars) at ThunderHill, our little cars did exceptionally well especially considering many of the full sized car projects have been running for years.  Even with all of their funding, only 4 full-sized cars were able to run autonomous laps and not one was able to make a lap with vision only. 

How was the 1/10th scale track able to demonstrate so much success in a shorter time?  I am not totally certain, but I suspect two things are the primary causes:

First, the cost of failure is zero – The amount of caution required for a the development of an autopilot for a full size car must greatly hamper speed of innovation.  With 1/10 we are able to take risks and test anywhere and move fast. 

Second is less obvious – What makes DIYRobocars special is that it is a collaborative league.  I cannot express how unusual this feels.  While we are all competitors, we share our code, our secrets for winning and brainstorm with our competitors how to make our cars faster.   Fierce competitors one moment are looking to merge code bases the next.  In the larger car league, many cars are sponsored by competing companies.  There is much less sharing and collaboration which puts the brakes on innovation.  

While the last 4 months have been great, I also look towards all we accomplish in the next 4.  While many designs will be refined and lap-times will drop, the next big step is to mix up the format to tackle the next set of technical challenges.  Our next big rule and format change is to incorporate is wheel-to-wheel racing which introduces a new set of technical problems.  More on the rule changes in the coming weeks.