Timetable

Imporant Dates

**Please note that our track follows a different timeline from the other two tracks.** The following dates are also availible on our CodaLabs page.

• Training phase starts: Oct 24, 2022 midnight UTC
• Validation phase starts: March 1, 2023 midnight UTC
• Testing phase starts: April 1, 2023 midnight UTC
• Competition Ends (final submissions due): May 1, 2023
• Winner Announcement: May 20, 2023

Anyone can register for the competition through our CodaLabs page until it ends on May 1, 2023. Please also note that our registration process differs from the other tracks and does not require filling out a google form.

Phases

• Training Phase: We provide a training set and validation set taken from GT-RAIN to use for development. In addition to the provided training set, participants may use any other dataset for training. However, the final training dataset is required to contain the training set of GT-RAIN. Please note that the validation set provided for this challenge is taken directly from a combination of the validation and the test set of GT-RAIN. A completely separate test set that has been collected for the purpose of this competition will be used to evaluate the final submissions.
• Validation Phase: To ensure a smooth final submission, participants can optionally submit their results on the provided validation set to receive feedback where your latest submission will be displayed on the leaderboard. Note that the purpose of this is to act as a "dry-run" phase; results obtained on the validation set do not necessarily correspond with the final performance. 
• Testing Phase: Participants are asked to predict the derained output from a newly collected test set that will be released during this phase without the corresponding ground truth image. This dataset will contain 15 scenes of 300 frames all cropped to multiples of 4. Your final score will be computed from a combination of the standard PSNR and SSIM.

For submission format, please carefully follow the guidelines outlined in the Evaluation and Submission section on our CodaLabs competition page. The organizers reserve the right to disqualify any participating team for any of the reasons mentioned above and if deemed necessary.

Prizes

The challenge is sponsored by the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) with monetary awards for the best performing teams: $1000 USD for first place, $800 USD for second place and $500 USD for third place.

Rules

Competition Guidelines

Read carefully the following guidelines before submitting. Methods not complying with the guidelines will be disqualified.

1. The challenge will be open to the public, but participants must register on the challenge website.
2. There will be a development, validation, and testing phase where the corresponding datasets will be released during each phase. A more detailed description of each phase is given below.
3. Participants will submit their results on the validation and testing sets for evaluation, with a limited number of attempts per phase to ensure fairness amongst teams registering for the competition at different times. This limit is set at 50 total submissions for the validation phase and 25 total submissions for the testing phase at 5 submissions per day. The best results for each phase will be reported on the benchmark.
4. Participants are required to use GT-RAIN as a part of their training set. Participants may use additional datasets for training to push the limits of state of the art, but must report them.
5. Participants must submit a fact sheet including description of their method, datasets used, etc. More details on what contents to include is given in the Evaluation and Submission section. The fact sheets will be compiled into a final report post challenge.
6. Participants are invited to submit manuscripts detailing their method to the workshop hosted at UG2+.
7. First, second and third place winners will receive monetary awards of 1000, 800, and 500 USD respectively.

Eligibility

• Foreign Nationals and International Developers: All Developers can participate with this exception: residents of, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Crimea Region of Ukraine, Sudan or Syria or other countries prohibited on the U.S. State Department’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list. In addition, Developers are not eligible to participate if they are on the Specially Designated National list promulgated and amended, from time to time, by the United States Department of the Treasury. It is the responsibility of the Developer to ensure that they are allowed to export their technology solution to the United States for the Live Test. Additionally, it is the responsibility of participants to ensure that no US law export control restrictions would prevent them from participating when foreign nationals are involved. If there are US export control concerns, please contact the organizers and we will attempt to make reasonable accommodations if possible.

• If you are entering as a representative of a company, educational institution or other legal entity, or on behalf of your employer, these rules are binding on you, individually, and/or the entity you represent or are an employee. If you are acting within the scope of your employment, as an employee, contractor, or agent of another party, you warrant that such party has full knowledge of your actions and has consented thereto, including your potential receipt of a prize. You further warrant that your actions do not violate your employer’s or entity’s policies and procedures.

• The organizers reserve the right to verify eligibility and to adjudicate on any dispute at any time. If you provide any false information relating to the prize challenge concerning your identity, email address, ownership of right, or information required for entering the prize challenge, you may be immediately disqualified from the challenge.

The organizers reserve the right to disqualify any participating team for any of the reasons mentioned above and if deemed necessary.

Warranty, indemnity and release

You warrant that your Submission is your own original work and, as such, you are the sole and exclusive owner and rights holder of the Submission, and you have the right to make the Submission and grant all required licenses. You agree not to make any Submission that: (i) infringes any third party proprietary rights, intellectual property rights, industrial property rights, personal or moral rights or any other rights, including without limitation, copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, privacy, publicity or confidentiality obligations; or (ii) otherwise violates any applicable state or federal law.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, you indemnify and agree to keep indemnified challenge Entities at all times from and against any liability, claims, demands, losses, damages, costs and expenses resulting from any act, default or omission of the entrant and/or a breach of any warranty set forth herein. To the maximum extent permitted by law, you agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless the challenge Entities from and against any and all claims, actions, suits or proceedings, as well as any and all losses, liabilities, damages, costs and expenses (including reasonable attorneys fees) arising out of or accruing from: (a) your Submission or other material uploaded or otherwise provided by you that infringes any copyright, trademark, trade secret, trade dress, patent or other intellectual property right of any person or entity, or defames any person or violates their rights of publicity or privacy; (b) any misrepresentation made by you in connection with the challenge; (c) any non-compliance by you with these Rules; (d) claims brought by persons or entities other than the parties to these Rules arising from or related to your involvement with the challenge; and (e) your acceptance, possession, misuse or use of any Prize, or your participation in the challenge and any challenge-related activity.

You hereby release organizers from any liability associated with: (a) any malfunction or other problem with the challenge Website; (b) any error in the collection, processing, or retention of any Submission; or (c) any typographical or other error in the printing, offering or announcement of any Prize or winners.

Contact

If you have any questions about this challenge track please feel free to email GTRainChallenge@gmail.com