Watching the car

There are multiple ways to watch the car during training and evaluation. The ports and 'features' depend on the docker mode (swarm vs. compose) as well as between training and evaluation.

Training using Viewer

DRfC has a built in viewer that supports showing the video stream from up to 6 workers on one webpage.

The view can be started with dr-start-viewer and is available on http://localhost:8100 or http://127.0.0.1:8100. The viewer must be updated if training is restarted using dr-update-viewer, as it needs to connect to the new containers.

It is also possible to automatically start/update the viewer using the -v flag to dr-start-training.

ROS Stream Viewer

The ROS Stream Viewer is a built in ROS feature that will stream any topic in ROS that publishing ROSImg messages. The viewer starts automatically.

Ports

Docker Mode	Training	Evaluation	Comment
swarm	8080 + DR_RUN_ID	8180 + DR_RUN_ID	Default 8080/8180. Multiple workers share one port, press F5 to cycle between them.
compose	8080-8089	8080-8089	Each worker gets a unique port.

Topics

Topic	Description
/racecar/camera/zed/rgb/image_rect_color	In-car video stream. This is used for inference.
/racecar/main_camera/zed/rgb/image_rect_color	Camera following the car. Stream without overlay
/sub_camera/zed/rgb/image_rect_color	Top-view of the track
/racecar/deepracer/kvs_stream	Camera following the car. Stream with overlay. Different overlay in Training and Evaluation
/racecar/deepracer/main_camera_stream	Same as kvs_stream, topic used for MP4 production. Only active in Evaluation if DR_EVAL_SAVE_MP4=True

Saving Evaluation to File

During evaluation (dr-start-evaluation), if DR_EVAL_SAVE_MP4=True then three MP4 files are created in the S3 bucket's MP4 folder. They contain the in-car camera, top-camera and the camera following the car.