[gist]

I will take the 'that guy' crown from you. I am thinking what is self driving if the video shows it going off the track and not slowing down for the curves. This reminds me of back in the day with slotted race cars that if you didn't pay attention they flew off the track.

This is not to say that it's not admirable but I was not as impressed as I think I should be when someone is doing self driving.

[rahulrav]

The rules of the race are that you can't cut corners from inside the track. Going out of the track is a natural penalty, so it's allowed. The car actually slows down a bit.

The ML algorithm being used is called behavioral cloning (and it's cloning me). It's just that I am a pretty rusty RC car driver :)

[Someone]

”Going out of the track is a natural penalty”

No, it isn’t. If the track is concave, driving the convex closure of the track shortens the distance travelled, decreases the amount of turning to do, and no corner will become tighter. That must mean the convex closure is faster to ride.

I guess that’s why the red cones are there. Passing them on the wrong side must lead to a steep time penalty or immediate disqualification.

Also, I would think that, in a really tight turn, you would have to slow down so much to stay on the track that overshooting the turn without braking as much is faster (I think the video shows that in the last corner of the round, at the right edge of the video)