City Students take to the track with AWS Deepracer

We were delighted to welcome Amazon Web Services to the College in September when they ran an AWS DeepRacer event with our students. The event was set up by Ashley Murphy Associate Dean Creative and Computing Technologies and a number of students studying various tech courses including Software Development, Networking and Games Development took part. 

For the uninitiated AWS DeepRacer supports machine learning in education through the fun and excitement of racing autonomous vehicles. The event provided students with the perfect opportunity to learn, practice, and compete to apply machine learning skills and python coding in a live race. AWS set up a track in the atrium where each competing student group was given the opportunity to race their car for 2 minutes around the track with their best track time being recorded on the live atrium screen. Over 20 student groups took part and over 100 students came along throughout the day to cheers on the competing teams.

The competition was fierce with the three best teams being asked to compete in a final showdown at the end of the day. In top spot was year 2 Games Development student Akira Park-hagiwara year with the impressive time of 8.4 seconds. AWS Chris Scudder who heads up AWS Deepracr events all over the world said, ‘Akira’s time was very competitive and really impressive’. In second place was Karena Fatkulina a year 1 Software Development student with another impressive time of just 08.57 seconds. In third place was the JP Chasers a team from our industry friend JP Morgan that included City of Glasgow college alumni Peter Kelly and Alisha Attigan with a competitive time of 09.32 seconds.

Ashley Murphy said 'More than 150 City of Glasgow College  technology students started their journey in August’23 to become our future workforce, completing qualifications that require skills in coding, AI and Machine learning. The DeepRacer event provided hands on training of the practical application of machine learning in a fun and interactive way. The students were engaged and eager to learn, creating  not only an exciting day but also igniting their passion to learn and giving students a solid foundation of knowledge to build on.'