Accelerating to Las Vegas: Inside the AWS DeepRacer 2023 Finals at reInvent

Intro

In 2023, I was a finalist in the AWS DeepRacer competition and had the chance to travel to AWS reInvent (all expenses paid by AWS). The experience was amazing; from start to finish, the organizers treated me as a VIP, and I met racers from around the world. I thought about writing this post to describe my experience as a racer, the final's perks, and how the final was organized.
This will be useful for future finalists who want to understand what they are about to live. I will also provide some tips at the end.

Story

I had the chance to attend AWS reInvent three previous times (2017, 2018, 2019). I was even there when DeepRacer was announced, but since I was always busy with something work-related, I only had a chance to get involved with it in May 2020, during the pandemic. That month, there was an F1 contest where two F1 professional racers created their own DeepRacer models and participated against developers to see who was best at virtual racing (the F1 racers didn't win).
Because of this contest, all DeepRacer training was free of charge, pushing me to try it. Since then, it has been my hobby. I could make it to the finals in 2020, but there was no physical reinvent that year, so the final was virtual. It was fun; I participated in several rounds and learned a lot from it. I ended in the top 30.
Then, in 2021 and 2022, the competition was tough, and I couldn't qualify.
The rules slightly changed in 2023; the qualification was per geographic region, and because of that, I could qualify quickly since only a few people were participating in LATAM. But that also pushed me to create content and give workshops and talks about DeepRacer; I wanted this technology to become more popular in my region.
At the same time, I also wanted to get experience in physical racing, but there are very few AWS Summits in the region. That's why I started collaborating with a university, and we started building a Community and hosting DeepRacer events and workshops. You can read more about this here.

League Prizes

As in any good competition, DeepRacer has excellent prizes. The prizes vary from year to year, but during 2023, the prizes were:

• $50 for those ending among the top 10% on the virtual race (per region)
• $400 for those ending among the top 3 on the virtual race (per region)
• Trip to the finals for those that win the virtual race (per region)

The cash prizes could be redeemed via PayPal or Amazon credits.

The trip prize included:

• Hotel Accommodations (All finalists stayed at the MGM Grand)
• ReInvent ticket (Costs $2100)
• Flight ticket from your nearest airport
• Transportation to/from the airport
• $400 pre-paid card for food or whatever you want to spend on (can't be used for gambling).

This was awarded to 48 racers (8 racers per region)

Final Prizes

Once you make it to the finals in Las Vegas, there are great prizes if you end up with the top racers. In 2023, the top 6 racers won:

1st place: $20,000 and a trophy.
2nd place: $10,000 and a trophy.
3rd place: $5,000 and a trophy.
4th to 6th place: $3,000 each.

These prizes are excellent, but even if you make it to the finals and don't end in the top 6, you still won a fantastic trip you will always remember.

Getting There

I flew from Buenos Aires to Las Vegas with a layover in Dallas, Texas. They put me on a convenient American Airlines flight with a 2-hour stopover. When I arrived in Las Vegas, I was greeted by a driver waiting for me to take me to my hotel.

PromoVeritas organizes the whole trip, and they do a great job making sure you feel like a VIP. And even the driver made me feel that way. When I asked her how busy Las Vegas was and if she thought the hotel would let me do an early check-in at 1 pm, she said: "I'm sure they will; You are a VIP". I felt that way during the whole trip.

Schedule

We had three rounds this week, including the final spread across the first three days of the week and an open race for everyone in the conference on Thursday.

First Round

Round 1 was a Virtual Round. All racers met at the Brooklyn Bowl and submitted their best models. Each region had its virtual race where racers from the region competed against each other. The top 5 from each region passed to round 2.
There were two chances per racer where. They could submit the same model or choose a different one. In my case, I had a model that I knew was good enough, so I used the same model twice. I was a little more aggressive the second time with the speed throttle.
I ended up 3rd in my region and made it to round 2.

I also received this beautiful box with DeepRacers socks and customized parts to tune my DeepRacer car.

This round was also an excellent opportunity to network with people from other regions, as this was one of the few times everyone in the competition participated simultaneously.

Practice Round

There was a practice round on Tuesday. I tried a few models, but I expected them to perform better. I continued to train some more models overnight.

Second Round

The second round started; this was the first time I raced in an AWS-hosted physical event.
Each racer has two tries (they can submit two different models or the same model twice).
On the first try, I tried a model I knew might work. It worked okay, but I used a more unstable model that performed poorly on the second try. I ended up in 29th place out of the 32 racers that made it to the second round (From 48 finalists that made it to the final itself).

This is how my model ran in the first try:

Final

Watching the final live was a lot of fun. All top competitors were close to each other, and I saw how they pushed their models more and more to try to make a difference. (The cars drive by themselves, but the racers can use a throttle to speed the models up or down)

The winner was FiatLux, but his model was run by a proxy driver (Doug Wozniak). Video below.

Final Picture (I'm on the right-most)

Karaoke

The AWS DeepRacer team organized a dinner in The Barbershop, a Karaoke place. DeepRacer finalists + AWS Pit Crew, and management were there.

The finalists even sang, "We are the champions".

All racers + pit crew from Latin America performed "La Bamba".

Final Thoughts

The finals are fun and are a great way to connect with like-minded individuals. There are also a lot of activities you can do at reInvent while you are not racing. If you read this because you made it to the finals and want to know how it will be, "Congratulations! You will have an amazing time". If you are not a finalist, I hope this encourages you to participate in DeepRacer and put some effort into it. It is worth it.

Here are a few tips from my experience:

• Being in Las Vegas is a lot of fun, and you can quickly be booked with activities to do at night, but dedicate some time to sitting in your hotel every night to rework your models. You will be doing tweaks daily and running models every day.
• For virtual sessions, run a practice round yourself in the simulator.
• The organization will give you self-explanatory instructions on what will happen each day of the week. Read everything carefully.
• Don't book any reInvent breakout sessions. All are recorded and uploaded to YouTube. But attend DeepRacer workshops as they are not recorded and usually help you gain more profound knowledge about DeepRacer.

And a few tips that apply to reInvent in general: Leave spare luggage space for swag, drink plenty of water, wear comfortable shoes, and be ready to walk 30k steps daily.

I hope you find this article helpful! The 2024 session just started, and the new rules have been announced.