On Saturday, students from Longmont High School, or LHS, participated in St. Vrain Valley School District’s first DeepRacer Invitational, an Amazon Web Service Hackathon. 

At the event, 16 students worked in teams of two to embed Artificial Intelligence, or AI, and reinforcement learning technologies into 1/18th scale race cars, also called DeepRacer. 

Using software by Amazon Web Service, or AMS, the students applied AI to their DeepRacer in efforts to make the artificial car model perform autonomously, speedily and reliably in a series of races. Between races, teams spent time tweaking their car’s programming so that it would achieve more speed and consistency in the next round. 

Although the student racers competed in categories of fastest, most reliable and most improved DeepRacer, no teams were disqualified from the tournament. Instead, the real purpose of the event was to provide students with the opportunity to work hands-on with AI and robotics, according to LHS senior Grayson Hubbell, who organized the entire event. Click here to read more on the Longmont Leader.