About the tinyML Challenge 2022 category

tinyML Challenge 2022
1

This is the place for discussing the tinyML Challenge 2022 - Smart Weather Station which is a joint ITU and tinyML challenge.

See the official contest page for all the rules and to register to join this challenge.

We held our tinyML Challenge 2022. Thomas Basikolo from ITU, Marco Zennaro from Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste and Alessandro Grande from Edge Impulse presented tinyML Challenge 2022: Smart weather station on June 29, 2022.

June 29 forum
June 29 forum1304Ă—299 45.8 KB

Developing Countries is the area of the globe where land-based, in situ monitoring of weather and climate is at its scarcest, but at the same time has arguably the most potential to benefit society.

Rainfall and temperature can have high spatial variability due to the strong feedback that can exist between the land and atmosphere. Temperature can change rapidly in space due to land-cover heterogeneity and changing altitude over complex mountainous terrain. This means that a weather station tens of kilometers away may measure conditions that have little relevance to your location, making it hard to make informed local decisions.

The goal of this challenge is to create a low-cost, low-power, reliable, accurate, easy to install and maintain weather station, with no mechanical moving parts for measuring all weather conditions with a focus on rain and wind, based on TinyML, that can be deployed locally.

This talk will introduce the 2022 tinyML Challenge and how you can participate in this Challenge.

Thomas Basikolo works with the ITU coordinating and managing the AI for Good’s ML5G activities and as an advisor of the ITU-T Focus Group on Autonomous Networks. He received a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Yokohama National University, Japan. During his studies, he was awarded the Japanese Government (Monbukagakushō) scholarship. He was also a recipient of grants for Non-Japanese Researchers from the NEC C&C Foundation, and a visiting researcher at the NEC Data Science Research Laboratories. Prior to joining ITU, he worked as a Research Engineer in the Engineering Department of Microwave Factory Co., Ltd, Tokyo, Japan. He is recipient of multiple Best Paper Awards, the IEEE AP–S Japan Student Award and the Young Engineer of the year award by IEEE AP–S Japan in 2018. He has co-authored peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, predominantly in the areas wireless communications and antenna engineering. He serves as a Reviewer of IEEE and IEICE Journals.

Marco Zennaro is a Research Scientist at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, a Category I UNESCO Institute, where he coordinates the Science, Technology and Innovation Unit. He received his PhD from the KTH-Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, and his MSc degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Trieste in Italy. His research interest is in ICT4D, the use of ICT for Development, and in particular he investigates the use of Internet of Things for Development (IoT4D). He acts as TinyML4D Chair and TinyML Academic Network Co-Chair, in the framework of the TinyMLEdu initiative. Over the years he has organized more than 30 training activities on IoT in Developing Countries. Marco is a Visiting Professor at Kobe Institute of Computing (KIC) in Kobe, Japan.

Alessandro is a physicist, an engineer, a community builder and a communicator with a visceral passion for connecting and empowering humans to build a more sustainable world through the aid of technology. Alessandro is the Director of Technology at Edge Impulse and co-organizes the tinyML Meetups in UK and Italy. Prior to Edge Impulse, Alessandro worked at Arm as a developer evangelist and ecosystem manager with a focus on IoT and TinyML. While at Arm Alessandro launched a weekly live stream – Innovation Coffee with his colleague Robert Wolff. Alessandro holds a master’s degree in nuclear physics from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”.

=========================
Watch on YouTube:
Thomas Basikolo / Alessandro Grande / Marco Zennaro

Download presentation slides:
Thomas Basikolo / Alessandro Grande / Marco Zennaro

Feel free to ask your questions on this thread and keep the conversation going!

3 Likes
2

I’d actually have three questions regarding requirements of the challenge:

  1. Is the use of microphones/audio sensors mandatory or can we freely choose the type of sensors we’d like to use?

  2. Can we decide on the battery size and is an additional solar panel allowed?

  3. Are there any requirements when it comes to precision, e.g. compared to results of public weather stations?

1 Like
3

Hi @riestere,
Thank you for your interest and for posting your questions!

  1. Microphones/audio sensors are not mandatory. Given the requirement of building a durable weather station that has no moving parts that can be built reliably in any part of the world and given the previous attempts we have come across, we encourage the use of audio as it seems a promising approach.
  2. The choice of the battery is completely up to you, and the use of the solar panel is not a requirement.
  3. The main requirement here is to show a measure of correlation between the measured rain and wind and the local weather station data.
    Happy to address any additional answers you may have.
4

Hi, I have some questions regarding the use case of this smart weather station. Where and how would the measured wind and rain data be used? If they are used e.g. in agriculture or climate study, what’s the corresponding accuracy and sampling rate required? Thanks!

5

Hi, I noticed when registering on the challenge website that not all of our team members are able to join. I did not see in the rules how many members can join a team-- is there a limit? If so, is it a hard limit? Our team has 5 members that would like to contribute.

6

Thanks for the great question. You can consider several use cases and from the application derive the accuracy and sampling rate. It’s great you have considered this issue. Have a look at WMO requirements, for example, if you want to consider the climate study case.

7

Hello @skim, on the registration (challenge portal), all team members are supposed to register and join the team. The process is simple (a) register (b) team create a Team (c) Team gets approved (d) Team members join the team.

We basically accept teams with a maximum of 4 participants unless if the 5th is a mentor. However, if you have 5 team members, please do send an email <AI5GChallenge[at]itu.int> and we will consider your special request.

1 Like
8

Any chance I can still submit? I have all the hardware I need.

9

Yes submissions are absolutely still open.
Looking forward to your submission!