Instance Classification Track

Instance Classification Track

The “Continual instance-level object classification” track features a stream of 15 experiences obtained by cropping the main object found in each video (see the dataset description for more details). This track features a fully supervised (labels are given for the training set) learning scheme in which the stream of incremental experiences is modeled by following the Class-Incremental scenario. No task labels or other additional signals are provided at test time.

Getting started

The devkit repository, which also contains the most technical information and guides, is shared among all tracks and can be found here.


The dataset can be downloaded by filling out this form. A download link will be immediately sent after filling out the form, so make sure you provide an active email address.


The dataset is the same for both classification and detection tracks. For this track, images for object classification are obtained by cropping the relevant portion of the image on-the-fly.


Make sure to check the list of available resources on the main challenge page here.

Rules

  • The benchmark creation procedure can't be changed. Instances will be loaded as 224x224 RGB images. A different input size can be used in the solution, but the image must first be loaded as 224x224.

  • The size of each model obtained after each training iteration (including the final model) is limited to 70M parameters (defined as the number of parameters, not its size in MBytes).

  • The total number of classes is known from the beginning and can be taken into consideration to pre-allocate the classification head, parts of the model, etcetera (see the template in the devkit).

  • Model initialization can be done by randomly initializing weights or by pretraining using the ImageNet-1K (ImageNet 2012) dataset (recommended). Apart from the pre-trained weights, the solution must not access/use data from the pretraining dataset.

  • Solutions can exploit a replay buffer containing data coming from up to 3500 training samples (image+label). The buffer must be initially empty and can be populated using data from the current experience only. This means that the replay buffer cannot be populated beforehand, nor it can be filled with data from future experiences. The only samples from past experiences must be the ones chosen before terminating the training on that experience.

  • Test-time training or tuning is not allowed. The solution must be able to predict the output for a training instance immediately after the training phase.

  • Exploiting any correlation that may exist between test instances is not allowed. The solution must be able to return a prediction without accessing other test data.

  • The solution must NOT use information regarding the category of instances, even if they are included in the training and test annotation files.

  • The solution must NOT use the information regarding the video ID at test time. The video ID can be used at training time (for instance, to generate a validation set based on the video ID).

  • The maximum allowed execution time for the whole solution (training+test) is 12 hours. This time will be measured on the reference server described on the challenge page.

  • In addition, all other general rules found on the main challenge page apply!


Evaluation


The CodaLab portal for submitting solutions for the Instance Classification track can be found: here.


A solution consists of a zip file containing 15 files. Each file must contain the predictions on the full test set obtained after completing the corresponding training experience. The devkit already contains a plugin that will take care of storing such output. The resulting files should be zipped without including intermediate directories inside the archive (and without changing the name of files).


The CodaLab portal reports how many submissions you already uploaded as well as the total and daily limits for submissions. The default behavior of CodaLab is to ignore failed submissions (invalid format, zip structure, etcetera) so that they do not count towards the submissions limit.


The final score is the Average Mean Class Accuracy (AMCA): for each pass on the test step, the mean class accuracy is calculated. Then, these 15 results are averaged to get the final result.