Learning overtaking and blocking skills in simulated car racing

Abstract

In this paper we describe the analysis of using Q-learning to acquire overtaking and blocking skills in simulated car racing games. Overtaking and blocking are more complicated racing skills compared to driving alone, and past work on this topic has only touched overtaking in very limited scenarios. Our work demonstrates that a driving AI agent can learn overtaking and blocking skills via machine learning, and the acquired skills are applicable when facing different opponent types and track characteristics, even on actual built-in tracks in TORCS.