Tag Archives: AWS DeepRacer

AWS Week in Review – August 15, 2022

Post Syndicated from Channy Yun original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-week-in-review-august-15-2022/

I love the AWS Twitch channel for watching interesting online live shows such as AWS On Air, Containers from the Couch, and Serverless Office Hours.

Last week, AWS Storage Day 2022 was hosted virtually on the AWS Twitch channel and covered recent announcements and insights that address customers’ needs to reduce and optimize storage costs and build data resiliency into their organization. For example, we pre-announced Amazon File Cache, an upcoming new service on AWS that accelerates and simplifies hybrid cloud workloads. To learn more, watch the on-demand recording.

Two weeks ago, AWS Silicon Innovation Day 2022 was also hosted on the AWS Twitch channel. This event covered an overview of our history of silicon development and provided useful sessions on specific AWS chip innovations such as AWS Nitro, AWS Graviton, AWS Inferencia, and AWS Trainium. To learn more, watch the on-demand recording. If you don’t miss such useful live events or online shows, check out the upcoming live schedule!

Last Week’s Launches
Here are some launches that caught my eye last week:

AWS Private 5G – With the general availability of AWS Private 5G, you can easily make your own private mobile networks with a powerful box of hardware and software for 4G/LTE mobile networks. This cool new service lets you easily install, operate, and scale high reliability and low latency of a private cellular network in a matter of days and does not require any specialized expertise. You pay only for the network coverage and capacity that you need.

AWS DeepRacer Student Community Races – Educators and event organizers can now create their own private virtual autonomous racing league for students by powering a 1/18th scale race car driven by reinforcement learning. They can select their own track, race date, and time and invite students to participate through a unique link for their event. To learn more, see the AWS DeepRacer Developer Guide.

Amazon SageMaker Updates – Amazon SageMaker Automatic Model Tuning now supports specifying multiple alternate SageMaker training instance types to make tuning jobs more robust when the preferred instance type is not available due to insufficient capacity. SageMaker Model Pipelines supports securely sharing pipeline entities across AWS accounts and access to shared pipelines through direct API calls. SageMaker Canvas expands capabilities to better prepare and analyze data, including replacing missing values and outliers and the flexibility to choose different sample sizes for your datasets.

Amazon Personalize Updates – Amazon Personalize supports incremental bulk dataset imports, a new option for updating your data and improving the quality of your recommendations. Also, Amazon Personalize allows you to promote specific items in all users’ recommendations based on rules that align with your business goals.

AWS Partner Program Updates – We announce the new AWS Transfer Family Delivery Program for AWS Partners that helps customers build sophisticated Managed File Transfer (MFT) and business-to-business (B2B) file exchange solutions with AWS Transfer Family. Also, we introduce the new AWS Supply Chain Competency, featuring top AWS Partners who provide professional services and cloud-native supply chain solutions on AWS.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New at AWS page.

Other AWS News
Here are some other news items that you may find interesting:

AWS CDK for Terraform – Two years ago, AWS began collaborating with HashiCorp to develop Cloud Development Kit for Terraform (CDKTF), an open-source tool that provides a developer-friendly workflow for deploying cloud infrastructure with Terraform in their preferred programming language. The CDKTF is now generally available, so try CDK for Terraform and AWS CDK.

Smithy Interface Definition Language (IDL) 2.0 – Smithy is Amazon’s next-generation API modeling language, based on our experience building tens of thousands of services and generating SDKs. This release focuses on improving the developer experience of authoring Smithy models and using code generated from Smithy models.

Serverless Snippets Collection – The AWS Serverless Developer Advocate team introduces the snippets collection to enable reusable, tested, and recommended snippets driven and maintained by the community. Builders can use serverless snippets to find and integrate tools and code examples to help with their development workflow. I recommend searching other useful resources such as Serverless patterns and workflows collection to get started on your serverless application.

Upcoming AWS Events
Check your calendars and sign up for these AWS events:

AWS Summit

AWS Summit – Registration is open for upcoming in-person AWS Summits that might be close to you in August and September: Anaheim (August 18), Chicago (August 28), Canberra (August 31), Ottawa (September 8), New Delhi (September 9), and Mexico City (September 21–22).

AWS Innovate – Data Edition – On August 23, learn how a modern data strategy can support your present and future use cases, including steps to build an end-to-end data solution to store and access, analyze and visualize, and even predict.

AWS Innovate – For Every Application Edition – On August 25, learn about a wide selection of AWS solutions across compute, storage, networking, hybrid, and edge infrastructure to help you scale application resources seamlessly and optimally.

Although these two Innovate events will be held in the Asia Pacific and Japan time zones, you can view on-demand videos for two months following your registration.

Also, we are preparing 16 upcoming online tech talks on August 15–26  to cover a range of topics and expertise levels and feature technical deep dives, demonstrations, customer examples, and live Q&A with AWS experts.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Week in Review!

— Channy

This post is part of our Week in Review series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!

New AWS Scholarship Program Helps Underrepresented and Underserved Students Prep for Careers in AI and ML

Post Syndicated from Antje Barth original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aws-scholarship-program-helps-underrepresented-and-underserved-students-prep-for-careers-in-ai-and-ml/

As a woman working in information technology (IT) for many years, it has always been close to my heart to challenge long-standing gender stereotypes and inspire more young learners to consider a career in tech. With artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) defining the future of technology, this future also depends on diverse representation.

The World Economic Forum estimates that technological advances and automation will create 97 million new technology jobs by 2025, including in the field of AI and ML. Yet, according to their research, women make up just 32% of AI jobs globally. The Pew Research Center found that Black and Hispanic workers in the U.S. comprise just 9% and 8% of workers in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers respectively.

At Amazon, we believe that technology should be built in a way that’s inclusive, diverse, and equitable. We already offer STEM programs to enable underrepresented groups to build or advance their technical skills and open up new career possibilities. Programs such as We Power Tech, Amazon Future Engineer, AWS Girls’ Tech Day, and AWS GetIT aim to build a future of tech that is inclusive, diverse, and accessible.

Today, I am excited to announce the launch of the AWS AI & ML Scholarship program in collaboration with Intel and Udacity, designed to prepare underrepresented and underserved students globally for careers in ML.

AWS AI & ML Scholarship Program Debuts with AWS DeepRacer Student
The AWS AI & ML Scholarship program is launching as part of the all-new AWS DeepRacer Student service and Student League. This is a new student division of the popular AWS DeepRacer program, a cloud-based 3D car racing simulator that provides a fun way to learn about ML and reinforcement learning (RL). Through DeepRacer Student, you have access to free online trainings to learn the ML and RL basics. You also have access to 10 hours of model training and 5 GB of storage per month to participate in the DeepRacer Student League, a global autonomous racing competition exclusively for AWS AI & ML students.

As part of DeepRacer Student, the AWS AI & ML Scholarship program in collaboration with Intel and Udacity is geared toward underserved and underrepresented high school and college students globally who are at least 16 years old. These are students who may have faced financial barriers growing up or are part of underrepresented groups, including women, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ persons, as well as people of color. Students in these groups who take part in the DeepRacer Student League are eligible for a chance to win one or two of 2,500 annual scholarships from Udacity, an online learning platform focused on technology skills.

How to Qualify for the AWS AI & ML Scholarship
AWS DeepRacer Student League LogoTo be considered for a scholarship, you must successfully finish all AWS DeepRacer Student learning modules and achieve a score of at least 80% on all course quizzes, reach a certain lap time performance with your DeepRacer car in the Student League, and submit an essay.

Each year, 2,000 students will win a scholarship to the AI Programming with Python Udacity Nanodegree program. Udacity Nanodegrees are massive open online courses (MOOCs) designed to bridge the gap between learning and career goals. This aims to equip students with programming and ML fundamentals to solve real world problems with ML. The top 500 participants in this first Nanodegree will be eligible to join a second customized Nanodegree program curated specifically for AWS AI & ML Scholarship program recipients.

Coaching and Mentorship Opportunities for Scholarship Recipients
Scholarship recipients not only get access to the educational content, but also receive up to 85 hours of support from Udacity instructors to make sure that students successfully learn and progress through the Nanodegree. Instructors and students meet weekly in small groups, review the content for the week, answer questions, and work on a case study as a group exercise.

The top 500 participants who advance into the second Nanodegree will receive 12 months of mentorship from tenured technology leaders at Amazon and Intel to help prepare for a tech career.

All scholarship recipients will be given exclusive access to Ask-Me-Anythings (AMAs), fireside chats, and office hours with AI/ML professionals and diversity experts from Amazon, Intel, and AWS collaborators such as Girls in Tech. These will help familiarize students with different job functions in the AI/ML field.

Enroll via AWS DeepRacer Student
To enroll in the AWS AI & ML Scholarship program, first sign up at the AWS DeepRacer Student service with a valid email address. Note that this student player account is separate from an AWS account and doesn’t require you to provide any billing or credit card information.

AWS DeepRacer Student Sign Up

You will receive a verification code via email. Once you have verified your email address, log in to the DeepRacer Student service and complete the sign-up process.

AWS DeepRacer Student Complete Sign Up

The form will ask for some additional information, including your school, major, and planned year of graduation. You must also self-certify that you are a student enrolled in either high school, university, or community college.

AWS DeepRacer Student Complete Sign Up with Personal Information

Next, enroll in the AWS AI & ML Scholarship program by selecting the corresponding checkbox. The scholarship qualification will start on March 1, 2022.

AWS DeepRacer Student Opt In To Scholarship

Welcome to AWS DeepRacer Student! Start learning the fundamentals of ML through the provided online trainings. You can also participate in the pre-season DeepRacer Student League before the qualifying races start on March 1, 2022.

AWS DeepRacer Student Dashboard

Available Now
Start preparing for the AWS AI & ML Scholarship program by signing up for AWS DeepRacer Student, available globally today, and opt in to the scholarship program. Start learning with learning modules, train your first AWS DeepRacer model, and see how it performs in AWS DeepRacer Student League Pre-season happening now. Join the AWS Slack community to connect with experts and ask questions.

Sign up for AWS DeepRacer Student and the AWS AI & ML Scholarship program today.

– Antje

AWS DeepRacer League’s 2021 Season Launches With New Open and Pro Divisions

Post Syndicated from Marcia Villalba original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-deepracer-leagues-2021-season-launches-with-new-open-and-pro-divisions/

AWS DeepRacer League LogoAs a developer, I have been hearing a lot of stories lately about how companies have solved their business problems using machine learning (ML), so one of my goals for 2021 is to learn more about it.

For the last few years I have been using artificial intelligence (AI) services such as, Amazon Rekognition, Amazon Comprehend, and others extensively. AI services provide a simple API to solve common ML problems such as image recognition, text to speech, and analysis of sentiment in a text. When using these high-level APIs, you don’t need to understand how the underlying ML model works, nor do you have to train it, or maintain it in any way.

Even though those services are great and I can solve most of my business cases with them, I want to understand how ML algorithms work, and that is how I started tinkering with AWS DeepRacer.

AWS DeepRacer, a service that helps you learn reinforcement learning (RL), has been around since 2018. RL is an advanced ML technique that takes a very different approach to training models than other ML methods. Basically, it can learn very complex behavior without requiring any labeled training data, and it can make short-term decisions while optimizing for a long-term goal.

AWS DeepRacer is an autonomous 1/18th scale race car designed to test RL models by racing virtually in the AWS DeepRacer console or physically on a track at AWS and customer events. AWS DeepRacer is for developers of all skill levels, even if you don’t have any ML experience. When learning RL using AWS DeepRacer, you can take part in the AWS DeepRacer League where you get experience with machine learning in a fun and competitive environment.

Over the past year, the AWS DeepRacer League’s races have gone completely virtual and participants have competed for different kinds of prizes. However, the competition has become dominated by experts and newcomers haven’t had much of a chance to win.

The 2021 season introduces new skill-based Open and Pro racing divisions, where racers of all skill levels have five times more opportunities to win rewards than in previous seasons.

Image of the leagues in the console

How the New AWS DeepRacer Racing Divisions Work

The 2021 AWS DeepRacer league runs from March 1 through the end of October. When it kicks off, all participants will enter the Open division, a place to have fun and develop your RL knowledge with other community members.

At the end of every month, the top 10% of the Open division leaderboard will advance to the Pro division for the remainder of the season; they’ll also receive a Pro Welcome kit full of AWS DeepRacer swag. Pro division racers can win DeepRacer Evo cars and AWS DeepRacer merchandise such as hats and T-shirts.

At the end of every month, the top 16 racers in the Pro division will compete against each other in a live race console. That race will determine who will advance that month to the 2021 Championship Cup at re:Invent 2021.

The monthly Pro division winner gets an expenses-paid trip to re:Invent 2021 and participates in the Championship Cup to get a chance to win a Machine Learning education sponsorship worth $20k.

In both divisions, you can collect digital rewards, including vehicle customizations and accessories which will be released to participants once the winners are announced each month. 

You can start racing in the Open division any time during the 2021 season. Get started here!

Image of my racer profileNew Racer Profiles Increase the Fun

At the end of March, you will be able to create a new racer profile with an avatar and show the world which country you are representing.

I hope to see you in the new AWS DeepRacer season, where I’ll start in the Open division as MaVi.

Start racing today and train your first model for free! 

— Marcia