Call for Competitions

September 16-17, Sapporo, Japan

IPIN is pleased to announce the IPIN 2017 Indoor Localization Competition, to be held at the IPIN 2017 Conference in Sapporo (Japan). The competition is aimed at bringing together the academic and industrial research communities for evaluating different approaches and envisioning new research opportunities for the indoor localization area, where no accepted standards exist yet.

IPIN 2017 Indoor Localization Competition will consist of several tracks, including on-site and off-site contests. Results will be presented during dedicated sessions of the IPIN conference and prizes will be awarded to the winners.

The competition builds on the experience of previous competitions based on EvAAL framework, ensuring experience, solidity and a well-founded scientific method (http://evaal.aaloa.org).

Competition Tracks

The following four tracks will be organized:

Track 1: Smartphone-based
Track 2: Pedestrian dead reckoning
Track 3: Smartphone-based (off-site)
Track 4: PDR for warehouse picking (off-site)

Track 1 "Smartphone-based": A pedestrian walking in multi-floor buildings carries a smartphone which runs the competing system, without any external aid, using the sensors available on the smartphones to identify the user's position in real time.
Prize: 150,000 JPY awarded by KICS (KR)

Track 2 "Pedestrian Dead Reckoning Positioning": The competing system uses MEMS sensors (inertial, compass and altimeter pressure sensors) mounted on the body to localize a pedestrian walking in multi-floor buildings; control and monitoring devices such as a notebook are carried by the user.
Prize: 150,000 JPY awarded by ETRI (KR)

Track 3 "Smartphone-based (off-site)": The goal is to localize a pedestrian walking under realistic conditions in multi-floor buildings using data provided by a conventional smartphone (WiFi, inertial, magnetic, GPS, pressure, light, ...). Competitors calibrate their algorithms in advance using a ground truth reference database, and compete using new unreferenced data.
Prize: 150,000 JPY awarded by TOPCON (JP,SP)

Track 4 "PDR for warehouse picking (off-site)": Data from inertial, pressure and magnetic sensors and BLE data from a smartphone plus picking records from a warehouse management system (WMS) are collected during 3 hours of actual picking work by 8 people carrying a smartphone on their back in a warehouse, with actions including walking, picking and carrying. Competitors obtain sample data and test data to calibrate their algorithms, and compete using separate actual data.
Prize: 150,000 JPY or more worth prize awarded by PDR benchmark standardization committee (JP).

Technical Competition Details

The evaluation criteria for the competition, restrictions on the accepted technologies, technical rules to follow and a description of the benchmarks are detailed in the technical annexes to this call. Announcements and possible refinements of the annexes, also based on candidate competitors' comments, will be timely distributed on the competition discussion mailing list < contest(at)evaal.aaloa.org> and will appear on the IPIN web site.

Maps of the competition area and all the relative information will be provided by the end of April.

All the data gathered by the competition committee during the competition, including data produced by competing systems, will be published after the competition for the purpose of research and comparison. Winners of the competition will be announced during the conference.

Competitor's Admission Process

A "competitor" can be any individual or group of individuals working as a single team, associated to a single or a number of organizations, who wants to participate in one or several tracks.

Competitors apply for admission to the competition tracks by providing a short (2 to 4 pages) "technical description" of their localization system, including a description of the algorithms and protocols used. The technical description must be sent by e-mail to the chairs of the intended track. Track chairs will accept or refuse the application in a short time, based on technical feasibility and logistic constraints.

After acceptance of the competitor's technical description, one member of the competing team is required to register to the IPIN conference, specifying that the registration is linked to a competition track. Full registration to the conference covers participation in the competition process (allocated time, support and space) and the submission of a paper describing the system.

Competitors are required to make an oral presentation of their system during a dedicated session at the IPIN conference. Additionally, competitor teams are invited, but not required, to submit a paper to the conference. The paper will follow the same peer review and publishing process as all the other papers submitted to IPIN. After the conference, competitors who are authors of an accepted paper describing a competing system will be allowed a short time to update it.

Competitors who wish to test their system, but do not want to be included in the public rankings and compared with other competitors, can ask for that special condition in advance to the chairs of the relevant track.

Important dates

(*) Competitors who are authors of an accepted paper will be allowed some time after the conference for updating it before publication.

(**) note that, even after the 15 July deadline has expired, individual tracks may still be able to accept further submissions: please contact the chairs of the track you are interested in if you plan to submit after the deadline

Organising Committee

General Chairs

Francesco Potortì (CNR-ISTI, Italy)
potorti(at)isti.cnr.it

Nobuo Kawaguchi (Nagoya unversity, Japan)
kawaguti(at)nagoya-u.jp

Sangjoon Park (ETRI, South Korea)
sangjoon(at)etri.re.kr

Track 1 Chairs

Filippo Palumbo (CNR, IT)
Antonino Crivello (CNR, IT)

Track 2 Chairs

Soyeon Lee (ETRI, KR)
Jaehyun Lim (ETRI, KR)

Track 3 Chairs

Joaquín Torres (Universitat Castellon, ES)
Antonio R. Jimenez (CSIC/UPM, ES)

Track 4 Chairs

Masakatsu Kourogi (AIST, JP)
Ryosuke Ichikari (AIST, JP)

All issues related with general diffusion, local organization, program, funding, etc., will be coordinated by general IPIN 2017 Committees.