Ray Based Distributed Autonomous Vehicle Research Platform

Abstract: My project tackles the question of whether Ray can be used to quickly train autonomous vehicles using a simulator (Carla), and whether a platform robust enough for further research purposes can be built around it. Ray is an open-source framework that enables distributed machine learning applications. Distributed computing is a technique which parallelizes computational tasks, such as training a model, among many machines. Ray abstracts away the complex coordination of these machines, making it rapidly scalable. Carla is a vehicle simulator that generates data used to train a model. The bulk of the project was writing the training logic that Ray would use to train my distributed model. Imitation learning is the best fit for autonomous vehicles. Imitation learning is an alternative to reinforcement learning and it works by trying to learn the optimal policy by imitating an expert (usually a human) given a set of demonstrations. A key deliverable for the project was showcasing my trained agent in a few benchmark tests, such as navigating a complex turn through traffic. Beyond that, the broader ambition was to develop a research platform where others could quickly train and run experiments on huge amounts of Carla vehicle data. Thus, my end product is not a single model, but a large-scale, open-source research platform (RayCarla) for autonomous vehicle researchers to utilize.