NOW OPEN: ICPR 2022 ODeuropa Competition on Olfactory Object Recognition (ODOR)

Painting: Jan Steen: The way you hear it, is the way you sing it, Painting c. 1665, Mauritshuis

We are proud to announce the launch of the ICPR 2022 ODeuropa Competition on Olfactory Object Recognition (ODOR), the world’s first competition for the detection of olfactory objects in historical artworks.

Olfaction is a crucial element of human experience, but has not gained a lot of attention in cultural heritage. The ICPR-ODeuropa Olfactory Recognition (ODOR) challenge has been created in the context of the EU-funded Odeuropa Project, which aims to remedy this shortcoming by promoting, preserving, and recreating the olfactory heritage of Europe.

Through this challenge, we want to promote the development of object detection algorithms that work under realistic conditions, such as varying image quality and modalities, long-tailed category distributions, or fine-grained detection classes. Being able to detect olfactory objects (e.g. tobacco pipes, perfumed gloves) might in turn lead to the ability to recognize more complex, implicit smell references such as smell gestures or olfactory iconography. The challenge thus promotes a multi-sensory perspective in computer vision and digital humanities.

Interested in competing and putting your computers up to the sniff-test? Find out everything you need to know to register here!