Researchers at the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision have launched a world-first competition to help robots sidestep the pitfalls of overconfidence.

The Robotic Vision Challenge throws down the gauntlet to the world’s robotics and computer vision research communities to join the Centre’s mission to develop new robotic vision technologies to expand the capabilities of ‘truly useful’ robots. Find out more>>

“Big global competitions have been very effective in computer vision research, but they haven’t really pushed the envelope for the sorts of problems an actual robot encounters in the real world,” said Centre Director Peter Corke.

“This new competition aims to solve that. It’s the world’s first robotic vision challenge; not a computer vision challenge.”

The competition challenges competitors to detect objects in video data from high-fidelity simulation of three different types of domestic service robots. Think, a future Rosie from The Jetsons.

It has already been accepted as a key workshop at the world’s largest computer vision forum, the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), in June. The four-day conference takes place in Long Beach, California (16-20 June, 2019).

“This is very exciting because we involved global research communities at the concept stage of the challenge last year, seeking ideas and insights at major forums like CVPR and the Robotics: Science and Systems conference,” said Centre Chief Investigator Dr Sünderhauf.

“We want to continue that global partnership, bringing robotics and computer vision communities together and encouraging new thinking on problem-solving.”

Dr Sünderhauf received a $72,000 Google Faculty Research Award to support the competition’s development by a team of Centre researchers based at QUT.

The novel aspect of the competition is its ‘probabilistic’ aspect for object detection. This unique evaluation rewards accurate estimates of spatial and semantic uncertainty using probabilistic bounding boxes.

Probabilistic object detection is important for robots to safely and effectively work in messy and unpredictable real-world environments.

The Robotic Vision Challenge is planned as an annual competition and lasting Centre legacy. The winner of the first round of the competition – and a $5000 [AUD] cash prize – will be announced at CVPR 2019.

Keen to enter the Robotic Vision Challenge? Click here to participate in the competition and access more information about the data and submission format.

Visit a dedicated Robotic Vision Challenge website www.roboticvisionchallenge.org and stay up-to-date on all our news across social media: @roboticvisionAU #roboticvisionau / @robVisChallenge

Watch it for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TR97EKUlaM