Back in early 2017, I had the incredible opportunity to participate in MIT’s 6.S094: Deep Learning for Self-Driving Cars competition—DeepTraffic. It was an exhilarating experience that marked a significant milestone in my journey with AI and autonomous driving technology.
Leaderboard Achievements
| DeepTraffic 1.0 | DeepTraffic 1.1 |
|---|---|
 |  |
Achieving #1 on DeepTraffic 1.0 & 1.1
In January 2017, after countless hours of hyperparameter tuning, model iteration, and deep reinforcement learning experiments, I managed to reach the #1 spot on the DeepTraffic 1.0 leaderboard under the username Instagram: Jorcus96 with a speed score of 75.38 MPH.
Just a month later, in February 2017, MIT released DeepTraffic 1.1, opening the competition to participants worldwide beyond MIT-registered students. The competition was even fiercer, but my optimized RL strategies paid off once again—I reclaimed the #1 spot on the DeepTraffic 1.1 leaderboard with an improved score of 75.82 MPH!
Turning Achievements into Opportunities
After securing the top rank on both leaderboards, I took screenshots of my rankings and shared them with potential sponsors to showcase my passion and technical competence in self-driving technology.
That effort yielded an unbelievable result: I was awarded a scholarship for the Udacity Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree! This scholarship gave me access to world-class learning resources, hands-on projects, and a community of passionate autonomous vehicle enthusiasts.
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Key Takeaways
Looking back, this experience taught me two important lessons:
- Persistence in AI/RL Experiments: Fine-tuning reinforcement learning models requires patience, systematic trial-and-error, and deep understanding of agent-environment interactions.
- Showcasing Your Work Matters: Achieving something is great, but actively sharing your achievements and reaching out to supporters/sponsors can unlock opportunities you might never have imagined.
Thank you to MIT for hosting such an awesome benchmark competition and to everyone who supported me throughout this journey!