Klaus Schöffmann wins Lifelog Search Challenge 2023

Multimedia researchers around the world are seeking ways to improve the search for content in large image and video pools. Similar to a Grand Slam tournament in tennis, the Video Browser Showdown or the Lifelog Search Challenge is an important competition geared specifically towards these research teams. The world’s best teams compete to see who is the quickest and most accurate at finding what they are looking for. Klaus Schöffmann, associate professor at the Department of Information Technology at the University of Klagenfurt, emerged as the winner of the Lifelog Search Challenge on 12 June 2023.

With the help of cameras and other sensors, lifeloggers document every single aspect of their lives. Images are taken every 30 seconds and are often stored together with other data, such as location or heart rate. This results in approximately 750,000 images along with metadata over a period of 1.5 years. This vast pool of data served as the starting point for the Lifelog Search Challenge, which took place on 12 June 2023 at the ACM International Conference on Multimedia Retrieval in Thessaloniki. Overall, all participating teams had to solve 30 different search tasks. 14 international teams entered the competition. The tasks were not only tackled by the developers themselves, but also by so-called novices who needed to quickly grasp the features of the search programme and put them to use. After four hours of fierce competition, the lifeXplore system, developed by Klaus Schöffmann, was declared the winner.

Klaus Schöffmann is an associate professor at the Department of Information Technology at the University of Klagenfurt. His research focuses on understanding video content (particularly medical and surgical videos), multimedia search, interactive media and applied deep learning. He is (co-)author of more than 100 publications in this field. He is a member of IEEE and ACM and regularly reviews for international conferences and journals in the field of multimedia.

Find out more about multimedia competitions such as the Video Browser Showdown or the Lifelog Search Challenge: https://www.aau.at/en/blog/the-fastest-trackers-in-video-searches/