Where Are We After Five Editions?: Robot Vision Challenge, a Competition that Evaluates Solutions for the Visual Place Classification Problem

This article describes the Robot Vision challenge, a competition that evaluates solutions for the visual place classification problem. Since its origin, this challenge has been proposed as a common benchmark where worldwide proposals are measured using a common overall score. Each new edition of the competition introduced novelties, both for the type of input data and subobjectives of the challenge. All the techniques used by the participants have been gathered up and published to make it accessible for future developments. The legacy of the Robot Vision challenge includes data sets, benchmarking techniques, and a wide experience in the place classification research that is reflected in this article.

This work was supported by grant DPI2013-40534-R of the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad of the Spanish Government and by Consejería de Educación, Cultura y Deportes of the Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha regional government through project PPII-2014-015-P. Jesus Martínez-Gómez is also funded by the JCCM grant POST2014/8171.