Long before Udacity showed up to help me plan a more effective course of action, I was doing what little I could to advance the state of the art in autonomous vehicles. The very first opportunity I heard of to do that was the Simulated Car Racing competitions. Although events are officially called that (SCR), I think of it as a misnomer; the events should really have been called SDRSC, Simulated Drivers Racing Simulated Cars. These competitions were designed for teams of AI researchers at university computer science departments but were technically open to anyone who could field an entry. That was all I needed.
For two consecutive events (2013 and 2015), I entered my SnakeOil car. I put an enormous amount of work into this project because I had no other way to participate in the future of autonomous vehicles. I learned a lot and it was quite exhilarating to see my car transformed from utterly stupid, bumbling around the track, to a serious smooth driving contender, racing for victory.
At the close of the final competition (no more events have been held) I was pretty tired from the effort and was relieved to collect my $100 (Australian) winnings and be done with it. I was expecting the 2015 organizers to produce a summary video of the competition as they had in years past, but sadly that never happened.
I had built this great AI system which was going to slip into my own personal obscurity like a really excellent sand castle on an deserted island. I knew that I wanted to preserve, for myself, some memento of all of the work I put into this. Recently, I had some motivation to dig out the project and get it all working again and record some videos.
I am delighted to now be able to remember and share this work through some exciting race videos of my SnakeOil cars in action. So for your entertainment and mine, I present the SnakeOil Exhibition Races.
Enjoy!