How AWS is transforming Formula 1 racing?
We all know what Amazon Web Services is. It is a cloud platform providing cloud infrastructure to various organizations and is currently the market leader in providing cloud solutions ahead of Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. Formula 1 on the other hand is one of the biggest global racing series in the world which originated in 1950s. So how these two are are partnering together? How AWS is contributing towards racing and broadcasting experience for a normal television viewer? These are some of the questions that are gonna get answered in this article.
When the partnership started?
In 2018, it was announced that Amazon Web Services was selected to move all the on-premises infrastructure and data centers to AWS’s cloud platform. This also resulted in adaptation of AWS’s machine learning and data analytics services to accelerate its cloud transformation.
The move is quite similar to the trend being followed by many big organizations around the world. More and more big organizations are moving their on-premises data centers to various cloud platforms to various benefits of cloud platforms.
Why did Formula One needed a shift towards Cloud Platform?
Formula One is a very technical sport. This is a sport where a fraction of second can be the difference between being first or last. Time does matter. Hence, the amount of data generated is very huge. Data from these powerful machines is collected from hundreds of sensors that are mounted on these cars. The data is analyzed and each part of it is scrutinized to extract every bit of performance from these cars. In this sport, biggest car manufacturers of the world like Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren and Renault participate. A lot of capital is invested to build and run these cars. However, the most important part is the evolving of these cars. In other words, teams are always in race with each other to build an even faster car than the other one. Hence, performance data from these cars is very important for the teams. This data helps teams in correlating the data from wind tunnel performance with on track performance. Hence, all the Data Analytics and Machine learning services by AWS cloud premises are perfect for such data dependent sport.
How AWS is transforming the viewer experience on television?
AWS is evolving the on-screen graphics for the sport by providing various interesting predictors with help of Data Analytics and Machine Learning like probability of a car overtaking its competitor, advantage of one car over another after a pit-stop or a tire change, tire wear data and much more. These graphics is creating a great experience for a normal television viewer and helps him in understanding the how various factors like tire-wear, slip-stream, temperature affect the performance of these power cars. It also creates a perspective if whether one competitor has an advantage over another at a particular stage of the race. Let’s look at two of such applications by AWS for Television graphics.
Overtake Probability
The purpose of this graphic is to display the probability of the chasing car overtaking the lead car. In this case the chasing car is Sebastian Vettel in a Scuderia Ferrari chasing Lewis Hamilton in a Mercedes at 2018 Mexican Grand Prix. This system factors in the tire advantage (as fresher are the tire, more is the grip, more the chance to overtake), slipstream (the car following receives less drag behind another car, hence less air resistance, higher is the top speed) and many more. Here’s a video of it in a practical use:
Pit Stop advantage
The purpose of this graphic is to predict two things. One is the gap in seconds between the two cars after the pit-stop and another is to display the chance of the chasing car to overtake the lead car which is in the pit-stop. This again factors in tire advantage that chasing car has got and also factors in the speed difference of chasing car (Sebastian Vettel in Scuderia Ferrari) which is on track and the lead car (Lewis Hamilton in Mercedes) which is running slower in the pit-lane. Here’s the video of it in practical use:
Which AWS services does Formula One use?
Formula One uses many services by Amazon Web Services. One of which is Amazon SageMaker. It is a fully managed machine learning service that enables everyday developers and scientists to easily build and deploy machine learning models. Using Amazon SageMaker, Formula 1’s data scientists are able train deep learning models with more than 65 years of historical race data, stored in both Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon Glacier. DynamoDB and Glacier are both cloud storage services by AWS. AWS Lambda is also used which is server-less code running service technology. Formula 1 also selected AWS Elemental Media Services to power its video asset workflows, enhancing the viewing experience for its 500 million plus fans worldwide. Finally, all the real-time race data is streamed to AWS using Amazon Kinesis along with Amazon S3 bucket storage. Here’s a video of Adrian Cockroft, VP Cloud Architecture Strategy AWS discussing as to how AWS is transforming the Formula 1 racing:
The future of Formula 1 would be shaped with help of conclusions drawn from the analysis of the race data of these cars, helped by Amazon Web Services. Regulations for the new cars would be decided on the basis of this data.
Formula 1 along with many other big organizations have set precedent for many other companies that Cloud Infrastructure is the future with its relatively low costing and higher than ever reliability. Case studies like these portrays a great picture for not only Cloud Computing, but also for Data Analytics, Machine Learning and Deep Learning.
