Finalists Begin Building Projects for OpenCV AI Competition 2021

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 29, 2021 — Phase 2 of OpenCV AI Competition 2021 sponsored by Microsoft Azure and Intel is now underway with 257 teams competing for prizes and bragging rights as they build their projects over the summer. Over $400,000 worth of prizes will be distributed in this two-phase competition.

1,238 submissions were received by organizers, a team of judges reviewed each one, and the chosen teams span the globe. Competition watchers and participants are using the #OAK2021 hashtag to post and follow the progress of teams.

This is the second OpenCV AI Competition, born out of the success of last summer’s OpenCV AI Kit Kickstarter campaign. The inaugural Grand Prize winner was Jagadish K. Mahendran, with his AI-powered, voice-activated backpack, which assists the visually impaired in navigation and perception. That project is now moving toward productization and has been featured worldwide in the press.

Competitors were encouraged to apply AI for regional as well as global impact projects. Trends among the submitted projects include using computer vision to enhance workplace safety, providing new tools to help the visually impaired, bringing new uses for artificial intelligence to agriculture, and pandemic assistance.

Each winning team has been shipped OpenCV AI Kit with Depth (OAK-D) modules free of charge – a powerful camera created by Luxonis capable of running neural networks and performing depth perception in real time. Competitors have also been given free credits on Azure, free access to the Intel DevCloud for the Edge platform, a personalized digital certificate, and access to an exclusive chat forum for support and discussion.

In total, nearly 1,200 hardware modules were shipped to Phase 1 winners by OAK creators Luxonis, Inc. Teams will have until August 9th 2021 to complete their projects. Regional Winners, announced on August 23rd 2021, will be awarded $5,000 for 1st place, $3,000 for 2nd place, and $2,000 for 3rd. The local community will be represented in the project judging and prize selection, with a $2,000 Popular Prize being awarded based on their votes.

Global Grand Prize winners will receive $20,000 for 1st place, $10,000 for 2nd place, and $5,000 for 3rd. Grand Prize Winners will be announced September 6th 2021.

Dr. Satya Mallick, CEO of OpenCV.org, said: “The OpenCV AI Competition is a global competition for solving local problems using spatial AI. Participants surprised us with the quality of their submissions and the breadth of problems they are solving in domains like manufacturing, agriculture, robotics, health and fitness, education, and many problems related to the COVID-19 pandemic. We thank our sponsors for their generous support.”

Prem Prakash, Director, Product Marketing, Azure AI at Microsoft said “We are impressed by the diverse solutions that developers are already building using the OAK-D Kit and Microsoft Azure AI technology. Congratulations to everyone in the OpenCV community.”

“This competition was designed to engage developers across the globe in solving some of our most pressing challenges and unleashing their creativity,” said Matthew Formica, Director, Edge AI Developer Platform Marketing, Intel. “The finalists stepped up to the challenge and are now building novel solutions that will help improve lives with AI – we’re proud to help enable their innovation using the Intel Movidius VPU and Intel OpenVINO software toolkit.”

An assortment of projects will be featured on the OpenCV.org blog, and many teams will be documenting their journey on social media platforms using the #OAK2021 hashtag. Due to OpenCV’s dedication to open source, many projects will be released under free software & hardware licenses.

The OpenCV AI Competition 2021 is sponsored by Azure and Intel, and is one of the largest spatial Artificial Intelligence competitions in history, with over $400,000 in prizes being awarded in 6 distinct geographic regions around the globe.

About OpenCV.org

OpenCV.org is a non-profit organization committed to serving a large and growing AI community by building an ecosystem of AI products and services. In addition to its flagship library, OpenCV.org and its partners create courses, design hardware, and provide consulting services for AI. OpenCV.org supports and informs the community through its forum and newsletter.

Source: OpenCV.org