Technology Innovation Institute (TII), a global research center and applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council, through its Autonomous Robotic Research Center (ARRC), has launched the crowdsourcing competition “Infrared Tracking Challenge” with the view of developing algorithms to process and interpret information from thermal imaging sensors.

Autonomous ground vehicles are capable of understanding their environment by applying deep-learning-based algorithms on top of perceptual information acquired from their sensors. At night, however, due to low amount of light, the use of a standard RGB imager is not adequate. A solution is to use thermal imaging sensors, which are capable of capturing heat data instead of light.

TII is using this crowdsourcing competition to discover machine learning-based solutions that can detect, track and re-identify objects in the dark, with only heat information. Open to innovators, startups, research institutes, and university students, the challenge will award the winning submissions a total of $75,000.

More information on guidelines, terms and conditions are available https://crowdchallenge.tii.ae/