The AI Driving Olympics: An Accessible Robot Learning Benchmark

Despite recent breakthroughs, the ability of deep learning and reinforcement learning to outperform traditional approaches to control physically embodied robotic agents remains largely unproven. To help bridge this gap, we have developed the “AI Driving Olympics” (AI-DO), a competition with the objective of evaluating the state-of-the-art in machine learning and artificial intelligence for mobile robotics. Based on the simple and well specified autonomous driving and navigation environment called “Duckietown,” AI-DO includes a series of tasks of increasing complexity—from simple lane-following to fleet management. For each task, we provide tools for competitors to use in the form of simulators, data logs, code templates, baseline implementations, and low-cost access to robotic hardware. We evaluate submissions in simulation online, on standardized hardware environments, and finally at the competition events. We have held successful AI-DO competitions at NeurIPS 2018 and ICRA 2019, and will be holding AI-DO 3 at NeurIPS 2020. Together, these competitions highlight the need for better benchmarks, which are lacking in robotics, as well as improved mechanisms to bridge the gap between simulation and reality.