Santa Clara, Calif. – A team from Carnegie Mellon University is the winner of the AutoCheckout Competition which was originally planned to run at the Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet-of-Things (CPS-IOT) Week in Sydney, Australia. AiFi, the technology company creating the world’s most advanced Autonomous Store Platform, and Carnegie Mellon University hosted the competition which was moved to a virtual online setting to protect the safety and health of all participants due to the current COVID-19 pandemic. AiFi, along with professors from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Stanford University and University of California Merced judged the competition remotely.
Yixin Bao, Xinyue Cao, Chenghui Li and Mengmeng Zhang were on the winning CMU team. They won for their multi-person shopping (MPS) for cashierless stores solution. Their platform is an end-to-end solution for autonomous shopping and receipts generation. The CMU graduate students achieved the overall highest accuracy rating to win the competition. Watch the AutoCheckout Competition Awards here.
Eight teams from four continents competed in the contest. Participants came from nine universities: Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, Harbin Institute of Technology, UC Merced, Georgia State University, Florida International University, Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, RMIT University, and the University of Georgia; as well as one industry partner
For the AutoCheckout Competition, techniques included vision-only, sensors-only and sensor fusion. Anything that required human manual interaction was not permitted. Competitors trained and tested their algorithms using a public dataset provided by AiFi. During the competition, competitors remotely deployed their system and tested it before the final evaluation. Results were processed and then shown in an AiFi autonomous store’s infrastructure and servers.
“The goal of the competition was to bring together the smartest minds and ideas from around the world to inspire new innovations and developments,” said João Diogo Falcão, VP of Engineering, AiFi. “Now more than ever, autonomous technology is critical. Not only is it more convenient with 24/7 shopping and real-time stock and behavior analysis, but it is also safer as our world tries to navigate our ‘new normal’ living with the current health crisis. We were really impressed with the hard work, commitment and creativity the groups presented during the competition. The future of autonomous shopping is bright.”
Soon AiFi will be releasing a large dataset of simulated shoppers and objects and, once the pandemic has ended, a real physical competition can be organized.
About AiFi
AiFi is an AI technology company automating the world’s stores for retailers and brands of all sizes, from small footprint pop-up stores to supermarkets. With its Autonomous Store Platform, AiFi is creating delightful and contactless customer shopping experiences with some of the most influential retail partners in the world including Carrefour, Albert Heijn, Żabka, Valora, and Loop. AiFi-powered stores are becoming destinations in cities like Amsterdam, Paris, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Shanghai. For more information about AiFi and its technology, visit www.aifi.io.
