Welcome to the McLaren Maze Race!
This is half a fun introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning suitable for all ages and abilities and half a challenge for anyone who wants to test their AI skills! So whether you are an AI newbie or a total pro you should find something here for you.
The Maze Race was created to go alongside season 2 of McLaren Substitute Teacher, a collaboration with Dell Technologies. You can watch the videos on the McLaren YouTube channel.
As you move through the four levels of the Maze Race you will build an AI capable of learning to drive a car, navigate a maze, deal with F1 features such as the safety car, DRS and pit stops, and master racing in the rain. You can choose just to read through the explanations, to run the interactive code snippets and watch the AI learn, or to get involved and try to improve the AI to achieve even better results.
The Maze Race introduces several key aspects of AI/Machine Learning, whilst also presenting a fun challenge. If you work through all the levels you will implement algorithms from across the field of AI: supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement learning.
Once you complete level 3, "Rookie Driver", you will be able to submit your own code to the online challenge below. This will pit your AI driver against other drivers from across the world to fight it out for the Maze Race Championship title. The best submitted code will also win an official McLaren team polo shirt signed by both our drivers. See the McLaren Maze Race website for more details.
The main interaction points are a series of Jupyter notebooks, one for each level. There are various ways you can get stuck in:
• View and run the notebooks on MyBinder. You will be able to run through all the levels, reading the explanations and running the code examples to see the AI learn. You won't be able to save any edits you make though, so if you want to get stuck into designing your own AI then you will need the next option.
• Download the repository from GitHub. This gives you full access to all the code and you can run and edit it on your own computer. You will need Python installed on your computer, but look out for the "getting_started.txt" text file, which will walk you through all the steps you need to take.
Once you reach level 3 you can take part in the Maze Race Challenge - race your AI driver against others from across the world. The fastest driver when the chequered flag drops in Abu Dhabi (12th December 2021) wins an exclusive prize: an official McLaren Team polo shirt, signed by both our drivers. For more details, see the McLaren Maze Race website
Have fun and let us know how you get on!