Call for Participation for the 2nd Semantic Robot Vision Challenge (SRVC)

Sponsored by the National Science Foundation (USA)

http://www.semantic-robot-vision-challenge.org

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The Semantic Robot Vision Challenge (abbreviated SRVC) is a research
competition that is designed to push the state of the art in image
understanding and automatic acquisition of knowledge from large
unstructured databases of images (such as those generally found on the
web).

In this competition, teams will be required to demonstrate a robot
that has the ability to:

     1. Autonomously connect to the Internet and build an object
        classification database sufficient to identify a number of
        objects found on a textual list.

     2. Use this classification database to autonomously search an
        indoor environment for the objects in its list.

Integrating a mobile robot with the vision research adds another
interesting layer of complexity that would not ordinarily be available
in a purely computer vision competition. Semantic understanding of the
objects could also be expanded to scene understanding as well. Thus,
scene context can be used to guide the search for objects in areas
which make the most sense for them to be found (e.g. a stapler is
usually found on a desk rather than on the floor or on a wall).

Teams can choose to participate in one of two different leagues:

- Robot league : teams bring their own robot to participate in the
    event.

- Software league : teams bring only a computer to run their
    software.  The visual data is collected immediately before the event
    by a robot run by the organizers.

We encourage anyone in these research fields to participate and help
us to advance the state of the art in image understanding research. At
the end of the competition, we will hold a workshop so that the
specific technical aspects of each entry can be presented and
discussed.

Teams that pass the qualification stage can apply for travel funding.

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The competition will be held as part of the IEEE Computer Society
Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition in Anchorage,
Alaska from June 23-28, 2008.

Qualification deadline - May 1st, 2008
(See the web site for more details on participation and qualification.)

If interested, please send the organizing committee an email to
indicate that you would like more information on
qualification/registration.

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Organizing committee:

Paul E. Rybski 
Alyosha Efros