The Infrared Tracking Challenge has been launched by the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The initiative is open to innovators, startups, research institutes and university students, and aims to find advanced sensors to enable the navigation of autonomous vehicles in the dark.
Entrants are encouraged to use publicly available data sets with similar content as TII’s provided sample data set in addition to using color-to-thermal domain adaptation techniques when necessary. All submissions will be evaluated based on TII-defined criteria.
The Challenge aims to find solutions for effectively tracking objects in low-light conditions, both in structured and unstructured environments. With AVs needing to safely navigate environments with changing light, and with current perception-based tracking algorithms not meeting all requirements, TII wants to explore radiometric sensors which can provide infrared rather than photometric frames for object tracking in low-light conditions.
The crowdsourcing competition was launched by the Technology Innovation Institute in collaboration with HeroX, a platform and open marketplace for crowdsourced solutions. The top three competitors will share a U$75,000 prize purse.
“Autonomous vehicles are the future,” said Dr Najwa Aaraj, chief researcher, Cryptography Research Center and the Autonomous Robotics Research Center, Technology Innovation Institute. “While autonomous driving technology still has some ways to go in achieving operational and technical impeccability, this Challenge will help innovators find solutions to ensure that autonomous vehicles on our roads operate as safely as possible. Such advancements will launch us into a bold, new phase of our autonomous transportation journey, and we are eager to see what the crowd comes up with.”
“You can always count on our network of innovators to push the envelope and propel us in exciting new directions,” said Kal Sahota, CEO, HeroX. “Enhancing autonomous vehicles is no exception: tapping the HeroX crowd is a strategic and efficient way to source innovations that will bring us into a thrilling new era for autonomous vehicles.”