Category: Events

Upcoming events (meetings, conferences, etc.)

EdTech awards 2021: Duckietown finalist in 3 categories!

Posted on | by Ivano Marocchi

Duckietown reaches the finals in the EdTech Awards 2021

The EdTech awards are the largest and most competitive recognition program in all of education technology.

The competition, led by the EdTech digest, recognizes the biggest names in edtech – and those who soon will be, by identifying all over the world the products, services and people that bet promote education through the use of technology, for the benefit of learners.

The 2021 edition has brought a big surprise to Duckietown, as it was nominated as a finalist in 3 different categories:

  • Cool Tool Award: as robotics (for learning, education) solution;
  • Cool Tool Award: as higher education solution;
  • Trendsetter Award: as a product or service setting a trend in education technologies.

Although a final is just a starting point, we are proud of the hard work done by the team in this particularly difficult year of pandemic and lockdowns, and grateful to you all for the incredible support, constructive feedback and contributions!

To the future, and beyond!

(hidden) Want to learn more about us?



Click here

Ubuntu laptop terminal interface with hands operating keyboard, Duckiebot and duckies out of focus in foreground

“Self-Driving Cars with Duckietown” MOOC starting soon

Posted on | by Ivano Marocchi

Join the first hardware based MOOC about autonomy on edX!

Are you curious about robotics, self-driving cars, and want an opportunity to build and program your own? Set to start on March 22nd, “Self-Driving Cars with Duckietown” is a hands-on introduction to vehicle autonomy, and the first ever self-driving cars MOOC with a hardware track!

Designed for university-level students and professionals, this course is brought to you by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), in collaboration with the University of Montreal, the Duckietown Foundation, and the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago.

Learning autonomy requires a fundamentally different approach when compared to other computer science and engineering disciplines. Autonomy is inherently multi-disciplinary, and mastering it requires expertise in domains ranging from fundamental mathematics to practical machine-learning skills.

This course will explore the theory and implementation of model- and data-driven approaches for making a model self-driving car drive autonomously in an urban environment, while detecting and avoiding pedestrians (rubber duckies)!

Enroll for free on edX

In this course you will learn, hands-on, introductory elements of:

  • computer vision
  • robot operations 
  • ROS, Docker, Python, Ubuntu
  • autonomous behaviors
  • modelling and control
  • localization
  • planning
  • object detection and avoidance
  • reinforcement learning.

The Duckietown robotic ecosystem was created at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in 2016 and is now used in over 90 universities worldwide.

“The Duckietown educational platform provides a hands-on, scaled down, accessible version of real world autonomous systems.” said Emilio Frazzoli, Professor of Dynamic Systems and Control, ETH Zurich, “Integrating NVIDIA’s Jetson Nano power in Duckietown enables unprecedented access to state-of-the-art compute solutions for learning autonomy.”

Enroll for free on edX

This massive online open course will be have a hands-on learning approach using, for the hardware track, real robots. You will learn how autonomous vehicles make their own decisions, going from theory to implementation, deployment in simulation as well as on the new NVIDIA Jetson Nano powered Duckiebots.

“The new NVIDIA Jetson Nano 2GB is the ultimate starter AI computer for educators and students to teach and learn AI at an incredibly affordable price.” said Deepu Talla, Vice President and General Manager of Edge Computing at NVIDIA. “Duckietown and its edX MOOC are leveraging Jetson to take hands-on experimentation and understanding of AI and autonomous machines to the next level.”

The Duckiebot MOOC Founder’s edition kits are available worldwide, and thanks to OKdo, are now available with free shipping in the United States and in Asia!

Get the Hardware in the USA or Asia
Get the Hardware in the rest of the world

“I’m thrilled that ETH, with UMontreal, the Duckietown Foundation, and the Toyota Technological Institute in Chicago, are collaborating to bring this course in self-driving cars and robotics to the 35 million learners on edX. This emerging technology has the potential to completely change the way we live and travel, and the course provides a unique opportunity to get in on the ground floor of understanding and using the technology powering autonomous vehicles,” said Anant Agarwal, edX CEO and Founder, and MIT Professor.

Enroll now and don’t miss the chance to join in the first vehicle autonomy MOOC with hands-on learning!

Enroll for free on edX

AI Driving Olympics 5th edition: results

Posted on | by Ivano Marocchi

AI-DO 5: Urban league winners

This year’s challenges were lane following (LF), lane following with pedestrians (LFP) and lane following with other vehicles, multibody (LFV_multi). 

Let’s find out the results in each category:

LF

  1. Andras Beres 🇭🇺  
  2. Zoltan Lorincz 🇭🇺
  3. András Kalapos 🇭🇺

LFP

  1. Bea Baselines 🐤
  2. Melisande Teng 🇨🇦 
  3. Raphael Jean 🇨🇦

LFV_multi

  1. Robert Moni 🇭🇺
  2. Márton Tim 🇭🇺
  3. Anastasiya Nikolskay 🇷🇺

Congratulations to the Hungarian Team from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics for collecting the highest rankings in the urban league!

Here’s how the winners in each category performed both in the qualification (simulation) and in the finals running on real hardware:

Andras Beres - Lane following (LF) winner

See the evaluation details

Melisande Teng - Lane following with pedestrians (LFP) winner

See the evaluation details

Robert Moni - Lane following with other vehicles, multibody (LFV_multi) winner

See the evaluation details

AI-DO 5: Advanced Perception league winners

Great participation and results in the Advanced Perception league! Check out this year’s winners in the video below:

AI-DO 5 sponsors

Many thanks to our amazing sponsors, without which none of this would have been possible!

Stay tuned for next year AI Driving Olympics. Visit the AI-DO page for more information on the competition and to browse this year’s introductory webinars, or check out the Duckietown massive open online course (MOOC) and prepare for next year’s competition!

Learn more about the MOOC
Learn more about the AI-DO

AI-DO 5 leaderboard update

Posted on | by Jacopo Tani

AI-DO 5 pre-finals update

With the fifth edition of the AI Driving Olympics finals day approaching, 1326 solutions submitted from 94 competitors in three challenges, it is time to glance over at the leaderboards! 

Leaderboards updates

This year’s challenges are lane following (LF), lane following with pedestrians (LFP) and lane following with other vehicles, multibody (LFV_multi). Learn more about the challenges here. Each submission can be sent to multiple challenges. Let’s look at some of the most promising or interesting submissions.

The Montréal menace

Raphael Jean at Mila / University of Montréal is a new entrant for this year. 

An interesting submission: submission #12962 

All of raph’s submissions.

The submissions from the cold

Team JetBrains from Saint Petersburg was a winner of previous editions of AI-DO. They have been dominating the leaderboards also this year.

Interesting submissions: submission #12905

All of JetBrains submissions: JBRRussia1. 

 

BME Conti

PhD student Robert Moni (BME-Conti) from Hungary. 

Interesting submissions: submission #12999 

All submissions: timur-BMEconti

 

Deadline for submissions

The deadline for submitting to the AI-DO 5 is 12am EST on Thursday, December 10th, 2020. The top three entries (more if time allows) in each simulation challenge will be evaluated on real robots and presented at the finals event at NeurIPS 2020, which happens at 5pm EST on Saturday, December 12.

Join the AI Driving Olympics now!

Test your skills in the urban league challenges and qualify for the finals at NeurIPS!
AI-DO 5

The “Self-Driving cars with Duckietown” hands-on Massive Open Online Course on edX

Posted on | by Jacopo Tani

"Self-Driving Cars with Duckietown" hands-on MOOC on edX

We are launching a massive open online course (MOOC): “Self-Driving Cars with Duckietown” on edX, and it is free to attend! 

This course is made possible thanks to the support of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), in collaboration with the University of Montreal, the Duckietown Foundation, and the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago.

This course combines remote and hands-on learning with real-world robots. It is offered on edX, the trusted platform for learning, and it is now open for enrollment. 

Learning activities will support the use of Jetson Nano equipped Duckiebots, powered by NVIDIA.

Enroll on edX

Learning autonomy

Participants will engage in software and hardware hands-on learning experiences, with focus on overcoming the challenges of deploying autonomous robots in the real world.

This course will explore the theory and implementation of model- and data-driven approaches for making a model self-driving car drive autonomously in an urban environment.

Pedestrian detection

MOOC Factsheet

  • Name: Self-driving cars with Duckietown
  • Start: March 2021
  • Platform: edX
  • Cost: free to attend

Prerequisites

  • Basic Linux, Python, Git
  • Elements of linear algebra, probability, calculus
  • Elements of kinematics, dynamics
  • Computer with native Ubuntu installation

What you will learn​

  • Computer Vision
  • Robot operations
  • Object Detection
  • Localization, planning and control
  • Reinforcement Learning
Enroll on edX

Why Self-driving cars with Duckietown?

Teaching autonomy requires a fundamentally different approach when compared to other computer science and engineering disciplines, because it is multi-disciplinary. Mastering it requires expertise in domains ranging from fundamental mathematics to practical machine-learning skills.

Robot Perception 

Robots operate in the real world, and theory and practice often do not play well together. There are many hardware platforms and software tools, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. It is not always clear what tools are worth investing time in mastering, and how these skills will generalize to different platforms. 

Duckiebot Detection

Learning through challenges

Progressing through behaviors of increasing complexity, participants uncover concepts and tools that address the limitations of previous approaches. This allows to get Duckiebots to actually do things, while gradually re-iterating concepts through various technical frameworks. Simulation and real-world experiments will be performed using a Python, ROS, and Docker based software stack.

Robot Planning

Enroll on edX

(Hidden) This line and everything under this line are hidden

This course combines remote and hands-on learning with real-world robots.

It is offered on edX, the trusted platform for learning, and it is now open for enrollment.

Learning activities will support the use of NVIDIA Jetson Nano powered Duckiebots.

Join the AI Driving Olympics, 5th edition, starting now!

Posted on | by Ivano Marocchi

Compete in the 5th AI Driving Olympics (AI-DO)

The 5th edition of the Artificial Intelligence Driving Olympics (AI-DO 5) has officially started!

The AI-DO serves to benchmark the state of the art of artificial intelligence in autonomous driving by providing standardized simulation and hardware environments for tasks related to multi-sensory perception and embodied AI.

Duckietown hosts AI-DO competitions biannually, with finals events held at machine learning and robotics conferences such as the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) and the Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS). 

 The AI-DO 5 will be in conjunction with NeurIPS 2020 and have two leagues: Urban Driving and Advanced Perception. 

Urban driving league challenges

This year’s Urban League includes a traditional AI-DO challenge (LF) and introduces two new ones (LFP, LFVM).

Lane Following (LF)

Get the LF kit

The most traditional of AI-DO challenges: have a Duckiebot navigate a road loop without intersection, pedestrians (duckies) or other vehicles. The objective is traveling the longest path in a given time while staying in the lane.

Lane following with Pedestrian (LFP)

Get the LFP kit

The LFP challenge is new to AI-DO. It builds upon LF by introducing static obstacles (duckies) on the road. The objectives are the same as for lane following, but do not hit the duckies! 

Lane Following with Vehicles, multi-body (LFVM)

Get the LFVM kit

In this traditional AI-DO challenge, contestants seek to travel the longest path in a city without intersections nor pedestrians, but with other vehicles on the road. Except this year there’s a twist. In this year’s novel multi-body variant, all vehicles on the road are controlled by the submission.

Getting started: the webinars

We offer a short webinar series to guide contestants through the steps for participating: from running our baselines in simulation as well as deploying them on hardware. All webinars are 9 am EST and free!

Introduction

Learn about the Duckietown project and the Artificial Intelligence Driving Olympics.

  • Nov. 9, 2020
ROS baseline

How to run and build upon the “traditional” Robotic Operation System (ROS) baseline.

  • Nov. 11, 2020
Local development

On the workflow for developing and deploying to Duckiebots, for hardware-based testing.

  • Nov. 13, 2020
RL baseline

Learn how to use the Pytorch template for reinforcement learning approaches.

  • Nov. 16, 2020
IL baseline

Introduction to the Tensorflow template, use of logs and simulator for imitation learning.

  • Nov. 18, 2020
Synch Webinar Calendar

Advanced sensing league challenges

Previous AI-DO editions featured: detection, tracking and prediction challenges around the nuScenes dataset.

For the 5th iteration of AI-DO we have a brand new lidar segmentation challenge.

The challenge is based on the recently released lidar segmentation annotations for nuScenes and features an astonishing 1,400,000,000 lidar points annotated with one of 32 labels.

We hope that this new benchmark will help to push the boundaries in lidar segmentation. Please see https://www.nuscenes.org/lidar-segmentation for more details.

Furthermore, due to popular demand, we will organize the 3rd iteration of the nuScenes 3d detection challenge. Please see https://www.nuscenes.org/object-detection for more details.

AI-DO 5 Finals event

The AI-DO finals will be streamed LIVE during 2020 edition of the Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2020) conference in December.

Learn more about the AI-DO here.

Participate in AI-DO 5 now
Get your AI-DO hardware kit
Join our Slack Community

Thank you to our generous sponsors!

The Duckietown Foundation is grateful to its sponsors for supporting this fifth edition of the AI Driving Olympics!

IROS2020: Watch The Workshop on Benchmarking Progress in Autonomous Driving

Posted on | by Ivano Marocchi

What a start for IROS 2020 with the "Benchmarking Progress in Autonomous Driving" workshop!

The 2020 edition of the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) started great with the workshop on “Benchmarking Progress in Autonomous Driving”.

The workshop was held virtually on October 25th, 2020, using an engaging and concise format of a sequence of four 1.5-hour moderated round-table discussions (including an introduction) centered around 4 themes.

The discussions on the methods by which progress in autonomous driving is evaluated, benchmarked, and verified were exciting. Many thanks to all the panelists and the organizers!  

Here are the videos of the various sessions. 

Opening remarks

Theme 1: Assessing progress for the field of autonomous vehicles (AVs)

Moderator: Andrea Censi

Invited Panelists:

Theme 2: How to evaluate AV risk from the perspective of real world deployment (public acceptance, insurance, liability, …)?

Moderator: Jacopo Tani

Invited Panelists:

Theme 3: Best practices for AV benchmarking

Moderator: Liam Paull

Invited Panelists:

Theme 4: Do we need new paradigms for AV development?

Moderator: Matt Walter

Invited Panelists:

Closing remarks

You can find additional information about the workshop here.

The Workshop on Benchmarking Progress in Autonomous Driving at IROS 2020

Posted on | by Liam Paull

The IROS 2020 Workshop on Benchmarking Autonomous Driving

Duckietown has also a science mission: to help develop technologies for reproducible benchmarking in robotics.  

The IROS 2020 Workshop on Benchmarking Autonomous Driving provides a platform to investigate and discuss the methods by which progress in autonomous driving is evaluated, benchmarked, and verified.

It is free to attend.

The workshop is structured into 4 panels around four themes. 

  1. Assessing Progress for the Field of Autonomous Driving
  2. How to evaluate AV risk from the perspective of real world deployment (public acceptance, insurance, liability, …)?
  3. Best practices for AV benchmarking
  4. Algorithms and Paradigms

The workshop will take place on Oct. 25, 2020 starting at 10am EDT. 

Invited Panelists

We have  a list of excellent invited panelists from academia, industry, and regulatory organizations. These include: 

  • Emilio Frazzoli (ETH Zürich / Motional)
  • Alex Kendall (Wayve)
  • Jane Lappin (National Academy of Sciences)
  • Bryant Walker Smith (USC Faculty of Law)
  • Luigi Di Lillo (Swiss Re Insurance), 
  • John Leonard (MIT)
  • Fabio Bonsignorio (Heron Robots)
  • Michael Milford (QUT)
  • Oscar Beijbom (Motional)
  • Raquel Urtasun (University of Toronto / Uber ATG). 

Please join us...

Please join us on October 25, 2020 starting at 10am EST for what should be a very engaging conversation about the difficult issues around benchmarking progress in autonomous vehicles.  

For full details about the event please see here.

Round 3 of the the AI Driving Olympics is underway!

Posted on | by Liam Paull

The AI Driving Olympics (AI-DO) is back!

We are excited to announce the launch of the AI-DO 3, which will culminate in a live competition event to be held at NeurIPS this Dec. 13-14.

The AI-DO is a global robotics competition that comprises a series of events based on autonomous driving. This year there are three events, urban (Duckietown), advanced perception (nuScenes), and racing (AWS Deepracer).  The objective of the AI-DO is to engage people from around the world in friendly competition, while simultaneously benchmarking and advancing the field of robotics and AI. 

Check out our official press release.

  • Learn more about the AI-DO competition here.

If you've already joined the competition we want to hear from you! 

 Share your pictures on facebook and twitter. 

Duckietown Workshop at RoboCup Junior

Posted on | by Kirsten Bowser

Duckietown Workshop at RoboCup Junior

In collaboration with the RoboCup Federation, the Duckietown Foundation will be offering workshops at RoboCup 2019 in Sydney, Australia, providing a hands-on introduction to the Duckietown platform.

We will be hosting three one-day workshops as part of RoboCup 2019 from July 4-6, 2019  for teachers, students, and independent learners who are interested in finding out more about the Duckietown platform. Attendance is completely free and everyone is welcome to apply, even if you are not participating in RoboCup. There are no formal requirements, though basic familiarity with GNU/Linux and shell usage is recommended. 

If you would like to apply to attend a workshop, please complete this form. 

We will have Duckiebots and Duckietowns for participants to use. However, you are more than welcome to bring your own Duckiebots, available for purchase at https://get.duckietown.org.