Call for Participation : MVA2023 Challenge on Small Object Detection for Birds

[Yuki Kondo]

Dear colleagues,

We cordially invite you to participate in our MVA2023 Challenge on Small Bird Detection.

Challenge description: The task of this challenge is to detect small birds on images, which is categorized to the Small Object Detection (SOD) problem. Distant-bird detection is an important function for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) such as drones to avoid bird attacks, or drive away harmful birds that destroy fields and rice paddies. Thus, this challenge not only raises academic issues in Computer Vision but also promotes practical technology developments that are expected to be employed in real-world applications. The images in our dataset are captured from drones. In addition to the general difficulties of SOD (e.g., lack of geometrical information for small objects), the annotated birds are of different types (e.g., hawk, crow, and wild bird), and have different parallax, postures, and different degrees of motion blur.

 

The Challenge consists of two categories "Research Category" and "Development Category to encourage a wide range of participants from academia and industry. Participants must select one of the categories at the time of participation.

 

Research Category: Participants are expected to not only exhibit the top performance but also propose novel technical contribution(s). Accordingly, each participant of this category is required to submit a technical paper.

Development Category: Participants can focus solely on achieving the top performance. No novel technical contribution is required.

 

Challenge details : http://www.mva-org.jp/mva2023/challenge　

CodaLab webpage : https://codalab.lisn.upsaclay.fr/competitions/9594

 

Top-ranking participants in the research category are invited to present their paper at MVA2023 and co-author a summary paper for the Challenge.

Prize Money & Awards

1.    Research Category

Rank         Prize Money                     Award                                          Oral 

1st              300 K.JPY        Best Solution Award                                   ✓†

2nd             200 K.JPY        Runner-Up Solution Award                        ✓†

3rd              100 K.JPY    Honorable Mention Solution Award             ✓†

4th – 6th     50 K.JPY                               -                                                 ✓†

 † The registration fee is free for oral presenters.

2. Technical Category

 Rank            Prize Money                     Award                Oral 

1st                 100 K.JPY             Winner Award              ✓†∗

2nd – 5th      50 K.JPY                                -                        -

 ∗ The recipient of the Winner Award receive the right to present their work in the special session in the main conference.

3. Common award

A chance to win the Best Booster Award will be given to participants in both categories. This award will be presented to the individual who are beneficially active in discussions on the Discord channel. The evaluation criteria will be based on the content of the discussion and the number of good reactions. The winner of this award is also invited to the conference free of charge.

 

Tentative Schedule:

Start of the Challenge (Public test phase)                              2023.1.10

Fact sheets, code/executable submission deadline             2023.4.14

Paper submission deadline (only Research Category)         2023.5.7

Test results release to the participants                                   2023.6.15

Camera ready due (only Research Category)                          2023.7.4

 

We look forward to your participation!

Best Regards,

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Technical Event Chair

Norimichi Ukita, Toyota Technological Institute, Japan

Yuki Kondo, Toyota Motor Corporation, Japan

Mail : mva20...@mva-org.jp