Call for Competition

Ninth IPIN Competition
off-site Indoor Localization
September 2022, online

IPIN is pleased to announce the ninth IPIN 2022 Indoor Localization Competition. The competition is aimed at bringing together the academic and industrial research communities for evaluating different approaches and envisioning new methods for indoor and seamless localisation, an area where no generally accepted standards exist yet.

The competition builds on the experience of previous competitions and is based on the EvAAL framework, ensuring experience, solidity and a well-founded scientific method. The IPIN 2022 Indoor Localization Competition is entirely off-site. It hosts six different Tracks, all pedestrian-based and all indoor, unless specified:

• Track 2: Camera
• Track 3: Smartphone
• Track 4: Foot-mounted IMU
• Track 6: Smartphone on vehicle
• Track 7: CIR in warehouse
• Track 8: 5G in open-plan office

The competition is off-site, meaning that competitors are provided with sensors data and use them to estimate the user position. Competitors calibrate their algorithms in advance using ground truth reference data (test trials) and compete using new unreferenced data (scoring trials).

Prizes of at least 5000 Rmb or 625 Eur per Track, partially sponsored by the Satellite Navigation journal, will be awarded during the IPIN conference.

Track 2 – Camera: Walking around and shooting photos to identify the position.

Track 3 – Smartphone: Walking under realistic conditions in multi-floor buildings with possibly small outdoor parts, using data provided by a conventional smartphone (data).

Track 4 – Foot-mounted IMU: A pedestrian carries ULISS (Ubiquituous Localization with Inertial Sensors and Satellites), a state-of-the-art Inertial Navigation System producing IMU data, MAG data, PRESSURE data & GNSS data, without the help of any maps, with possibly small outdoor parts (data).

Track 6 – Smartphone on vehicle: A smartphone fixed to a car dashboard records sensors and GNSS data on a partly outdoors, partly indoors route (data).

Track 7 – CIR in warehouse: People with UWB tags move through a warehouse-like environment in LOS and NLOS conditions and observe Channel Impulse Response (data).

Track 8 – 5G in open-plan office: ToA data are collected in an open-plan office (data).

TECHNICAL COMPETITION DETAILS

The evaluation criteria for the competition, restrictions on the accepted technologies, technical rules and a description of the benchmarks are detailed in the technical annexes to this call. Possible refinements of the annexes, even based on applicants' comments, will be timely distributed on the competition discussion mailing list and will appear on the EvAAL web site.

Competitors obtain sensor readings and submit position estimates through the EvaalAPI web service. The aim is to emulate a causal process similar to the data flow of an on-site Track: input data can be read only once and only in sequence, and the timestamp of each submitted position estimate is the same as the latest sensor reading.

Competitors calibrate their algorithms in advance using ground truth references (test trials), and compete using new unreferenced data (scoring trials).

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 are announced on the EvAAL and IPIN web sites and on the contest mailing list. Scientific publishing opportunities will be offered to competitors.

COMPETITOR 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 applies to participate in one or several Tracks. Only one team from a given organisation (laboratory) is allowed to compete. A team can compete in any number of Tracks. Registration to the competition is included in the registration of at least one team member for the IPIN 2022 conference, and counts as a single paper or poster published at the conference.  Alternatively, registration to the competition costs 800 Rmb or 100 Eur for the first Track plus 400 Rmb or 50 Eur for any additional Track, to be paid when results are submitted, see the IPIN 2022 web site. Applicants are invited to subscribe to the contest mailing list and use it to ask for general information. For private communications, please write to the organisers or to the chairs of the relevant Track.

News and updates are posted to the contest mailing list.

IMPORTANT DATES