VIP Cup 2017

Traffic Sign Detection under Challenging Conditions

Final ResultsThe first edition of the IEEE Video and Image Processing Cup 2017 Global Competition held its final competition on 17 September 2017 in Beijing, China, during the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP). The Winners of VIP Cup 2017 are:


Winning team: Neurons
Students: Uday Kamal, Sowmitra Das, Abid Abrar
Institution: Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology
Supervisor: Md. Kamrul Hasan


First Runner-Up Team: PolyUTS
Students: Weixi Feng, Aung Min, Jiawei Zhang, Chenhang He, Hardy Zhu, Wenqi Jia
Institution: University of Technology Sydney, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, University of New South Wales
Supervisor: Xiangjian He


Second Runner-Up Team: Markovians
Students: Sayeed Shafayet Chowdhury, Ahmed Maksud, Jubaer Hossain, Kinjol Barua, Roknuzzaman Rokon, Muhammad Suhail Najeeb, Nahian Ibn Hasan, Shahruk Hossain, Shakib Zaman, SM Raiyan Chowdhury
Institution: Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology
Supervisor: Mohammad Ariful Haque


Dataset is available HERE



  • September 9, 2017: VIP Cup final is almost here! Next Sunday afternoon, September 17, three finalist teams will present their work in the VIP Cup final session at ICIP 2017. Please check the ICIP website for exact time and location. Each team presentation will be around 20 minutes including Q&A and a judging panel will select the ultimate winners.
  • August 15, 2017: We would like to congratulate team Neurons, team PolyUTS, and team Markovians for making it to the finals of VIP Cup 2017. We are looking forward to the final round of the competition at the ICIP conference, which will be held on Sunday afternoon, September 17, 2017. Please stay tuned.
  • August 13, 2017: We would like to thank all the participants and the followers of VIP Cup 2017. Performance evaluation of competing teams is finalized. We will announce the top three performing teams once we get the confirmation from IEEE. Please stay tuned.
  • August 1, 2017: Announcement of best three teams is rescheduled for next week because of previous submission deadline extension. Thanks for your understanding and please stay tuned.
  • July 5,2017: For clarification, we provided an image that explains the annotation format and coordinate system. Upper corresponds to the corner with higher y values and lower corresponds to the corner with lower y values. Right corresponds to the corner with higher x values and left corresponds to the corner with lower x values.
  • July 5, 2017: As some of the participants already noticed, please ignore the origin of the coordinate system expression in the long description and follow the requested annotation format provided in the annotation files as “frameNumber_signType_llx_lly_lrx_lry_ulx_uly_urx_ury”. You can also describe your annotation format in the report that is part of the submission package. Deadline is almost here, please do not forget to include behind-the-scenes pictures in your submission in addition to the required items in the package.
  • June 30, 2017: The momentarily issue in the submission system is resolved. Meanwhile, we extend the competition deadline based on the requests. The new submission deadline is July 8th 2017, 10 AM CST and the submission system access link is https://www2.securecms.com/VIPCup/Submission.asp.
  • June 30, 2017: Please carefully check the submission package requirements that are explained in Section 2.7 of project description. Moreover, please do not forget to check important rules and reminders that are mentioned in Section 2.8. We encourage participating teams to provide behind-the-scenes pictures that were captured while working on the competition. You are the first teams to work on the VIP cup so let’s make it special and show the community how the competition process is thanks to your pictures.
  • May 16, 2017:  We would like to encourage the competing teams to take behind-the-scenes pictures while working on the competition. You will be the first teams to work on VIP Cup so let’s make it special and show others later on how the competition process is thanks to your pictures. We will ask for these pictures as part of your submission package. We are confident that you will do a good job in the algorithmic side so you can also start thinking about demonstration ideas. The best three teams will give a presentation at ICIP 2017, which should include a demonstration/video showcase. Presentation session will be the time for you to shine and get all the recognition you deserve.
  • May 15, 2017: There was misnaming in 6 of the video files. The challenge levels for the video sequences that start with 02_07_01_09 were changed from 00-04 to 01-05. And there was an extra underscore in 02_11_01_01_05_, which was removed.
  • April 8, 2017:  The detection task in VIP Cup 2017 includes localization and identification of traffic signs. As stated in the long description Section 2.4 and Section 2.7, the submission requires estimated detection files which should include sign types and coordinates of the bounding boxes for detected signs.
  • March 30, 2017: Please do not forget to official signup to the VIP Cup from HERE!
  • March 29, 2017: You can access the links for Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Dropbox from the Google form above.
  • March 28, 2017: In case of Dropbox access issues because of heavy data traffic, you can utilize the OneDrive link. If you have already signed up to the Google form before and did not receive an email about the access links, you can refill the sign up form above and save the links.

1. Competition Overview

Robust and reliable traffic sign detection is necessary to bring autonomous vehicles onto our roads. State of the art traffic sign detection algorithms in the literature successfully perform the task over existing databases that mostly lack realistic road conditions. This competition focuses on detecting such traffic signs under challenging conditions.

To facilitate such task and competition, we introduce a novel video dataset that contains a variety of road conditions. In such video sequences, we vary the type and the level of the challenging conditions including a range of lighting conditions, blur, haze, rain and snow levels. The goal of this challenge is to implement traffic sign detection algorithms that can robustly perform under such challenging environmental conditions.


 2. Competition Organization

The competition is open to any team that is eligible to participate and make a submission, which is due July 1, 2017 and the finalists of the competition are announced by August 1, 2017. Finalists will be selected by the organizers of the competition and will be invited to ICIP 2017 based on the overall performance whose details will be announced when the database is released on March 15, 2017. A judging panel will evaluate the three finalists to determine the ultimate winners at ICIP 2017, which will be held September 17-20, 2017. In addition to algorithmic performances, demonstration and presentation performances will also affect the final ranking. Presentations will be followed by questions of judging committee and general audience.

3. Organizing Team

The competition is sponsored by the IEEE SPS Multimedia and Signal Processing (MMSP) Technical Committee in collaboration wth the following organizing team members:
– Ghassan AlRegib
– Can Temel
– Tariq Alshawi
– Steve Chen

* VIP Cup is overseen by the Student Service Committee of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (Patrizio Campisi, Chair).

Official Website:

https://signalprocessingsociety.org/community-involvement/vip-cup-2017

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