Announcement
Oct 16, 2020 Winner's presentation videos have been released.
Winners presentation video
July 22, 2020 We will start application for online award ceremony and winner presentation (8/8). The award ceremony will also include an FPGA online seminar for the 4th contest that is currently being held. If you would like to participate, please apply below.
Application for the award ceremony
June 1, 2020 In the solusion tab, we have posted the source code link and report of the prize winner, and the result of the performance evaluation of the applicant.
March 5, 2020 The set of final result application form has been set up at the bottom of the data page. March 2, 2020 Clarified the definition of the section to measure the inference time. (Evaluation) February 25, 2020 Updated the sample of a trained network based on Tiny Yolo v3.
February 25, 2020 Updated materials for submission details.
February 19, 2020 The materials used in the FPGA seminar have been uploaded to the data page.
February 6, 2020 The outline of 2020/2/6 FPGA seminar has been released. If you would like to participate, please apply from the "FPGA Seminar Participation Application Form" at the bottom of the page.
February 6, 2020 The team creation deadline has been extended to February 29, 2020.
January 23, 2020 "Awards" has been updated.
January 8, 2020 Evaluation criteria have been finalized. In addition, a sample of a trained network based on Tiny Yolo v3, which is the basis for setting, has been uploaded to the data page.
December 11, 2019 An article about the contest has been published on EDA EXPRESS.
December 5, 2019 The data which organized the details of the submission was uploaded to the data page.
November 21, 2019 The flow of entry / registration for the contest and the decision method for winners were added.
November 19, 2019  Registration of FPGA board offers started.
Purpose

As startup companies and major vendors have been aggressively entering AI hardware market mainly in the United States and China, it is an urgent issue in Japan to develop human resources and industry of the hardware market in order to accelerate AI processing including LSI and FPGA as well as software.
In light of such situation, we will hold this contest for the purpose of development of C-based composed HLS introduced as a development of AI hardware - RTL design - LSI development as well as development of startup and industry.

Contest Outline

Subject
(Algorithm development) Create an algorithm to detect a rectangular area including objects from the image of vehicle front camera. 
(Algorithm implementation) Design hardware accelerators and implement algorithm on  the target FPGA board.
Provided data
(Train/Test) Image of the vehicle front camera
(Train) Rectangular area labeled with objects
(Train) Image meta information (travel route/time of day, etc.)
Identifying target
Car, Pedestrian, Truck, Bicycle, Signal, Sign
Platform
Avnet Ultra96 FPGA board
Submissions
・Software/HLS or a set of RTL
・Composed log (size, composed estimated data of electric power)
・Measurement results by performance
・Report (Option, It is not mandatory. Free style.)
*Template and submission method will be announced later.
Awards
<Best Performance Award>

1st Prize: The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry Commerce Information Policy Bureau director award / The Extreme Edge Award / The 1st Prize Trophy / 500,000 yen Google Cloud Platform Coupon (100,000 yen)

2nd Prize: The Extreme Edge Award / The 2nd Prize Trophy / 300,000 yen Google Cloud Platform Coupon (50,000 yen)

3rd Prize: The Extreme Edge Award / The 3rd Prize Trophy / 100,000 yen Google Cloud Platform Coupon (50,000 yen)


Idea Award
Idea Award Trophy / 200,000 yen(Up to 3 people)

Collaboration with other competitions
Higher ranking winners of the contest can be qualified to participate in the “Autonomous Driving AI Challenge"which is scheduled to be held by the Japan Automobile Engineering Society in June 2020, and can challenge to implement algorithm into the automatic driving program, to equip it into a cart vehicle and to drive its vehicle.


Subject (Algorithm Development)
Assign a rectangular area including predictive object as bounding box=(x1,y1,x2, y2) toward the image of the vehicle front camera and give one category. More than one bounding boxes are assigned on each image and a bounding box is indicated by specifying 4 points of the top left coordinates (x1, y1) and bottom right coordinates (x2, y2) in the object area as the origin (0,0) on the top left coordinates on the image.
Predictive target objects are following 6 categories.
・Car
・Truck
・Pedestrian
・Bicycle
・Signal
・Signs


Subject (Algorithm Implementation)
Implement developed algorithm into Avnet Ultra96 (Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC ZAU3EG SBVA484) FPGA board. We plan to provide FPGA board to a maximum of 80 applicants based on the review of application among the people who apply through application form for the board offer document review. Please apply from the button below if you would like to get the FPGA board offer to use for this contest.


Data
Route:Tokyo Route1 (Shibuya - Haneda), Tokyo Route2 (Kagurazaka), Saitama Route (Bijogi)
Time of day:Morning/Daytime/Night (Only Daytime for Tokyo Route2 (Kagurazaka))
Shooting interval:One second (*There are some exceptions.)
Resolution:1936 x 1216
Number of Images:(For Train) 21,258 images, (For Test) 6,355 images
Number of Categories:10
Category Types:Passenger Car (Car), Pedestrian (Pedestrian), Truck (Truck), Signal (Signal), Signs (Signs), Bicycle (Bicycle), Motorbike (Motorbike), Bus (Bus), Special Vehicle (Svehicle), Train (Train)


Travel Route
Tokyo Route 1 (Shibuya - Haneda)             Saitama Route (Bijogi)



Flow of entry / registration for the contest
1. Sign up for SIGNATE (Please register through the member registration button on the top right of the page if you are not currently a member.).
2. Download the data from the data tab (Please agree the terms of entry that will be displayed when downloading.).
3. Prepare the Ultra96-V2 board (if you do not have one, you can purchase it by yourself or apply through the application form for the board offer document review on the website.).
4. Algorithm development, FPGA implementation and optimization.
5. Check the Precision by posting predictive result through the post button.
6. Submit the set of final result by the end of the contest.(application form has been set up at the bottom of the data page.)



Reference information for obtaining the Ultra96 board to use for this contest

・Subjected board for this contest is Ultra96-V2.
・Regarding method to obtain: There are two ways to obtain it.

1. Provided from this contest
- Although limited in number, the Ultra96 board will be provided after review for the contest participants. For those of you who wish to be provided, please apply through the "application form for board offer document review".
- Provided board includes an AC adapter, power conversion cable, and JTAG board.

2. Obtain from the Avnet website
- You can purchase from here.
- We recommend you to purchase the following related parts along the purchasing of the board.
JTAG board for Ultra96: It is necessary to connect the UART (serial) consol.
・Avnet recommended AC adapter, power conversion cable
 - Power supply
 - Conversion connector

Regarding the errata of Ultra96 board
The errata from Avnet is published the following site.
http://avnet.me/Ultra96-V2_Errata

The errata particularly has the following known issues:
・Reboot issue of Ultra96-V2
 - Ultra96-V2 When the load of the PL part goes up high, MPSoC reboots.
 - Ultra96-V2 It is posted on the errata reporting page.
This is caused by the reset operation in MPSoC that was triggered by the PowerGood signal's drop when a specific threshold is exceeded while the IC called PMIC is monitoring the Vccint voltage.
- There is no margin for this threshold setting in the current V2 board, and a reset is applied when a set threshold is exceeded due to increase in current consumption of the PL section.
- The limit is 3A for the current ULtra96v2.

・The limit of this errata can be relieved to about 5A by revising the board and changing the setting of PMIC. A complete set of countermeasure procedures prepared by Avnet can be downloaded from below.
 20191114_Ultra96-V2 PMIC update procedure.zip (This can be obtained by the data tab on this website)
 Infinion that is required for the measures of this issue.
 The sales information of USB005 writing cable is as follows.
 Mouser
 Digikey
 Chip1Stop

・We plan to provide this revised board for the board offered from this contest.


FPGA seminar for AI edge contest

In conducting the FPGA implementation contest of the AI edge contest, we held a seminar on edge deep learning processing using FPGA for software and AI engineers who are interested in hardware implementation such as FPGA, and applied for the contest. Aim to accelerate human resource development through contest application, along with providing opportunities.

Overview
Date: 13:30-17:00, Tuesday, February 18 (Reception starts at 13:00-)
Location: Innotec Building 2F Seminar Room
agenda:
13:00: Venue open
13: 30-13: 50 (20min) Opening remarks and introduction of the contest (Saito of NEDO, Obuchi of Digital Media Professional)
13: 50-14: 35 (45min) FPGA Seminar # 1 (Koyama of FPGA Information)
14: 35-14: 50 (15min) break
14: 50-15: 35 (45min) ML learning platform of Google Cloud to be used in AI edge development (Sato of Google)
15: 35-16: 50 (75min) FPGA seminar # 2 (Koyama of FPGA Information)
16: 50-17: 00 (10min) Wrap-up, Q&A throughout (Obuchi of Digital Media Professional)

Information for the day
Reception desk: Innotek Building 1F (3-17-6 Shin-Yokohama, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama 222-8580)
Reception start time: 13:00, Tuesday, February 18
Reception method:
Please receive the "Building Admission Sticker" at the dedicated reception on the right side of the 1F front entrance, and go up to the 2nd floor using the entrance stairs.
Please give your reception number in the front room of the 2F seminar room. Please hand one business card at that time. (If you do not have a business card, please let us know.)

Evaluation method
[Precision] Evaluated by evaluation function "MAP@loU=0.75".
[Processing performance (fps)] Average inference time per sheet
[Area] Composed Report

Decision method of winners
1) Applicants whose Precision evaluation (final evaluation) of the predictive results posted during the contest period meet the Precision criteria 0.15 can be candidates for winners.(You can download a sample of the trained network based on Tiny Yolo v3, which is the basis for setting the accuracy standard, from the data page)
*The information of the precision criteria based on the original Tiny Yolo's network will be provided (provisional precision values) by the beginning of December, and the final required precision will be confirmed by the end of the year.
*The precision can be checked by using the submitting function of this website even during the contest, and evaluation after the contest ends (final evaluation) is adopted for the precision evaluation.

Evaluation until the final day of the contest (provisional evaluation) is performed by a part of the evaluation data set, and evaluation after the contest (final evaluation) is performed by the remaining part of the evaluation data set.

The leaderboard automatically switches to the final evaluation at the end of the contest. For this reason, rankings may vary greatly between during and after the event.

2) Among the winning candidates who meet the precision criteria and submit (application form has been set up at the bottom of the data page) a set of final results (including processing performance (average inference time per sheet) and the information of the FPGA implementation area) by the end of the contest (submission deadline), the top five people with the highest processing performance (plus those whose reports are worthy of attention) will be invited to the Review Committee.
The section where the processing time should be measured is "the time from performing inference processing on the image data already loaded on the memory, and then converting it to information equivalent to JSON such as dict".

3) The winners (best performance award and special award) are determined based on the processing performance, the content of the demo each brought in, the points of ingenuity (refer to this section for the area information) at the Review Committee.


Evaluation function of Precision
・The evaluation function MAP @ IoU = 0.75 will be used.
・An evaluation value between 0 and 1 will be assigned. The higher the accuracy, the higher the value will be.
・Please refer to the evaluation function that can be downloaded on the data page

Details of Evaluation function of Precision
1.For test images, if the IoU for the overlap of ground truth and prediction areas is 0.75 or greater, area detection is considered to have been successful.
2.For test images, average precision (AP) will calculated in each prediction category for objects in each detection area.
3.For each test image, mean average precision (MAP) calculation will be carried out for all eligible prediction categories based on step 2 results.
4.MAP, as calculated in step 3, will be calculated for all test images.


Comprehensive Ranking
・This competition is not subject to SIGNATE's comprehensive ranking (score and medal).

Use of System
・Only one account can be assigned to one person. However one account can be assigned to a team as well. If you want to participate as a team, please read here to create a team. (Deadline to create a team: December 31, 2019 (Tuesday))

Information Handling
・Sharing of data and source code related to the prediction of this contest with participants other than the same team shall be prohibited.
・However, it can be shared only if it is open to all participants in this contest forum.

Use of Data
・Use of data other than provided data, learned models, API, etc. shall not be restricted as long as the method allows verification of reproducibility without charge.
・For example, modification of learning data (including manual labeling and label rewriting) shall be allowed.

Host:Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry / New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO)

Co-host:Digital Media Professionals Inc. / SIGNATE Inc.

Support:IEEE Japan Office / IEICE Technical Committee on Reconfigurable Systems (RECONF) / Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA) / The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) / The Society of Instrument and Control Engineers (SICE) / The Robotics Society of Japan (RSJ) / Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan, Inc. / The Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI) / The Japan Society for Precision Engineering

Sponsor:Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Insurance Inc. / Mitsubishi Electric Corporation / Panasonic Corporation / Digital Media Professionals Inc. / Dynamic Map Platform Co., Ltd. / DENSO Corporation / NEC Corporation / Google Japan LLC / Tier IV, Inc. / SAKURA Internet Inc. / Sony Corporation / SoftBank Corp. / Renesas Electronics Corporation / Informa Intelligence G.K. / Morpho, Inc. / Toyota Research Institute Advanced Development, Inc.


Steering Committee Members
Shinpei Kato Tokyo University
Kohei Ozaki Algotechnica LLC
Atsuto Suyama SB Drive Corp.
Naoki Suganuma Kanazawa University
Yutaka Sato National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
Hiroaki Kitano Sony Computer Science Laboratories
Hiroaki Matsumoto Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation
Hironobu Tanba SoftBank Corporation
Hironobu Fujiyoshi Chubu University
Hiroki Nakahara Tokyo Institute of Technology
Yoshiki Ninomiya Nagoya University
Hirokazu Nishio Mitou Foundation
Masaki Hiraga Morpho, Inc.

Disclosure policy

As a general rule, in accordance with Article 4, Paragraph 1 of the terms of participation, diclosing any contents such as insights and deliverables transmitted through the information or data provided by our company in relation to this competition is not permitted, however, only after the completion of this competition and for non-commercial purposes, it will be possible to disclose the contents within the score of the table below
Model *1
Public
Analysis results *2
Public
Public : Posting to social media sites, blogs and source repositories, and citing to papers
Restricted : Using in a limited range from research, education to seminars, where many unspecified people cannot access
*1 Execution unit source code and learned models
*2 The insights obtained using the information and data provided, or the solutions including scripts and processed data such as summary statistics

▼ Special Contract on this Contest
In accordance with Article III “Prizes and Rights” of the special regulations established for this contest as described below, participants will either choose to make their own submission data, source code and other relevant items be licensed under an Open Source Initiative approved license (www.opensource.org) or not. This license imposes no restrictions on commercial use for licensed models, source code, and any results attained using said source code. Incidentally, the participants who will not choose this license will not be able to prize winner candidate, even though they can participate in the contest. In regard to posting and/or other publication on any social media site, blog or similar by the participant of information relating to any algorithm developed by said participant or any other materials produced for or related to this contest (including materials used for final submissions and/or final evaluations/inspections), no restrictions apply to posting and/or publication as long as the participant clearly explains that the posted/published items relate to this contest, and absolutely posts the positing and/or publication information (including the link URL to the pages) on the contest forum in order to let all the participants know it.


In order to participate in the Competition, you are required to agree to these Terms, in addition to the Terms of Use of SIGNATE.JP Site (hereinafter referred to as the “Terms of Use”). You should participate in the Competition after reading carefully and agreeing to these Terms. If you agree, these Terms, the matters that are added to these Terms as "additional matters", the Terms of Use and other terms and conditions that you have agreed to shall be binding on the relevant parties as integral documents.


Article 1. Definitions

1.For the purpose of these Terms, the following terms shall be defined as follows:

(1)"Site" means the website "SIGNATE (https://signate.jp)” on which the Competitions are posted.
(2)"Competition" means any competition on AI development or data analysis on the Site as held by the Host.
(3)"Host" is the host(s) of the Competitions. The Host may be SIGNATE, Inc. (hereinafter referred to as the “Company”) or the Company’s client companies, affiliated companies, schools or organizations, etc. (hereinafter referred to as the “Client(s)”).
(4)"Participant(s)" means the member(s) who participate in a Competition.
(5)"Submissions" means, collectively, the analysis and prediction results and reports, etc. as submitted in the Competition.
(6)"Final Submissions" means the Submissions that are specified by a Participant on the prescribed page in the Site by the time of completion of a Competition.
(7)"Winner Candidate" means the Participant who has received a notice from the Company that he/she is nominated as a winner candidate.
(8)"Submissions for Final Judgment" means the analysis and prediction model and learning data, etc. as submitted by a Winner Candidate pursuant to the instructions of the Company.
(9)"Final Judgment" means the acceptance inspection and judgment, including reproducibility verification, by the Company for the Final Submissions and Submissions for Final Judgment of a Winner Candidate.
(10)"Winner" means the Winner Candidate who is informed by the Company that he/she has won a prize.
2.Unless otherwise defined in these Terms, the terms used in these Terms that are defined in the Terms of Use shall have the same meaning as defined in the Terms of Use.

Article 2. Competition

1.A member who desires to participate in a Competition shall be required to agree to these Terms and to satisfy the conditions for participation as specified in each such Competition. Any person who is not a member shall not participate in any Competition.
2.Participants shall participate in each Competition in the manner as advised by the Company and shall be obligated to comply with the rules as prescribed in each Competition.
3.Participants may submit the Submissions for the assignment of each Competition during the period of such Competition and submit a proposal on the method of solving the problem to the Host by the end of the period of the said Competition.
4.Participants may submit the Final Submissions in the form specified in each Competition by the time specified by the said Competition.
5.The Final Submissions as submitted shall be evaluated by the evaluation method as specified in each Competition and the final rank order shall be determined based on such evaluation.
6.Any Participant may, as a general rule, check the evaluation results of the Participant him/herself and each of the other Participants on the Site for the Submissions that may be evaluated quantitatively.
7.Participants shall be liable or otherwise responsible for their own Submissions, including their legality.
8.Participants shall not submit any Submissions that have no direct relationship to each Competition.
9.Unless otherwise provided for, Participants shall not directly communicate to, consult with, make a request to, solicit or take any other actions with the Host in respect of the matters related to a Competition during the period of the said Competition.
10.Any Participant who has uncertainty or questions about any Competition shall make sure to contact the Company or its designee through the procedures prescribed by the Company as posted on the Site.
11.The Company shall not be obligated to pay any remuneration or other consideration other than those prescribed in the following Article for any act of the Participants as prescribed in paragraphs hereof.

Article 3 Reward and Vesting of Rights

1.Unless otherwise provided for, any Participant shall satisfy the following requirements in order to be entitled to receive a reward in any Competition that offers a reward:

(1)To be a winner;
(2)To agree to transfer to the Host and the relevant transferee of rights in such Competition all transferable rights, such as copyrights, rights to obtain patents and know-how, etc. in and to all analysis and prediction results, reports, analysis and prediction model, algorithm, source code and documentations for the model reproducibility, etc., and the Submissions contained in the Final Submissions and Submissions for Final Judgment (including the rights as prescribed in Article 27 and Article 28 of the Copyright Act and the rights to obtain patents; hereinafter referred to as the "Rights");
(3)To agree that any relevant transferee of rights exclusively has the right to use the know-how contained in the Final Submissions and Submissions for Final Judgment for its own business and other purpose without any restriction;
(4)To agree not to exercise moral rights to the Rights against the relevant transferee of rights;
(5)To enter into an agreement for the transfer of the Rights with the relevant eligible transferee of rights, including the agreement to the matter in the preceding three (3) items and other reasonable provisions;
(6)To have the personal identity of such Participant verified by the Company.
(7)Not to breach any provision of these Terms and the Terms of Use.

2.Any Winner Candidate shall, after having received a notice from the Company that he/she is nominated as a winner candidate, submit the Submissions for Final Judgment on or before the designated date and communicate the matters requiring confirmation or response in relation to the Final Submissions and the Submissions for Final Judgment to the Company on or before the designated date, in accordance with the instructions of the Company. The Company shall carry out the final judgment based on such matters requiring confirmation or response. If the Company receives no confirmation or response satisfactory to the Company on or before the designated date, the Company may exclude such Winner Candidate from the subject of the final judgment.
3.If the Company considers that the Final Submissions or Submissions for Final Judgment need to be amended or modified, or there occur any additional matters requiring confirmation, in the course of the final judgment, any Winner Candidate shall take action or make response in relation to the matters that require amendment, etc. or the detailed information on the matters requiring confirmation, on or before the designated date in accordance with the instructions of the Company. If the Company receives no action or response satisfactory to the Company on or before the designated date, the Company may exclude such Winner Candidate from the final judgment.
4.The Company shall determine the Winner through the final judgment and inform the Winner to that effect.

Article 4 Confidentiality

1.Participants shall treat any information, data, or such contents as insights and deliverables transmitted through the service where they receive from the Company in relation to each Competition (hereinafter referred to as the "Company-Provided Information") as confidential information and shall not disclose the same to any third party and use the same for any purpose other than for such Competition and purpose specified by the Company separately; provided, however, that the confidential information shall not include any information that falls under any of the following items:

(1)Information that is known to the public at the time of the disclosure;
(2)Information that is already possessed by the Participant at the time of the disclosure (only in the case where such Participant may demonstrate such fact by reasonable means);
(3)Information that becomes known to the public without the fault of the Participant after the disclosure;
(4)Information that is independently developed by the Participant without reference to any information as disclosed (except for those Submissions of the person eligible for a prize which are evaluated); or
(5)Information that is rightfully disclosed by any third party having a right to do so without the obligations of confidentiality (only in the case where such Participant may demonstrate such fact by reasonable means).

2.Any Participant shall delete or return to the Company the Company-Provided Information immediately after the completion of each Competition.
3.Any Winner shall handle his/her Final Submissions and Submissions for Final Judgment in the same manner as prescribed in paragraph 1 hereof.
4.If there is any separate arrangement in relation to the confidential information in each Competition, the provisions of such arrangement shall prevail over the provisions of these Terms.
5.If any dispute occurs between the Host or other third party and the Company due to the breach by any Participant of the provisions of this Article and such other party makes any claim against the Company, such Participant shall compensate for any damage, loss, expenses (including, but not limited to, attorneys’ fees), lost profits and lost revenues, etc. incurred by the Company.
6.The provisions of this Article shall survive the termination of the relevant Competition or the Participant’s completion of the procedures for withdrawal from the service of the Company, with respect to the Company-Provided Information and the Winner’s Final Submissions and Submissions for Final Judgment for a period of five (5) years thereafter.

Article 5 Prohibited Acts of Participants

1.The Company shall prohibit Participants from engaging in any of the following acts in any Competition:

(1)An act of cracking, cheating, spoofing other misconduct;
(2)An act of directly communicating to, consulting with, making a request to, soliciting or responding to solicitation or other activities to other Participants or the Host (other than the Company) without the involvement of the Company;
(3)Any profitmaking activities using the Competition (including solicitation or scouting activities, and use for a third party in educational business, etc.) without the prior approval of the Company in writing or any other manner specified by the Company;
(4)Transfer, offering as collateral or other disposition of the status as a Participant or the rights or obligations as a Participant (except with the prior written consent of the Company); and
(5)Any other act in breach of the Terms of Use.

2.If the Company deems that a Participant engages in any of the prohibited acts as prescribed in the preceding paragraph, the Company may, without prior notice to the Participant, disqualify the Participant from the Competition in which the Participant participates, temporarily suspend the Participant from using the service of the Company, withdraw the Participant’s membership, claim damages from the Participant or take any other measures deemed necessary by the Company.

Article 6. Change, Discontinuation or Termination of Provision of Services under These Terms

1.The Company may change or temporarily suspend the services provided by the Company under these Terms without prior notice to the members.
2.Upon one (1) month prior notice to the members, the Company may suspend for a long period of time or terminate the services provided by the Company under these Terms.
3.The Company shall not be liable for any results or damage arising from the measures taken by the Company under this Article.

Article 7. Modification of Terms

1.The Company may modify, add or delete any provisions of these Terms from time to time without the approval of the members.

Enforced on April 1, 2018
Last updated on January 18, 2019