Signal Processing - July 2017 - 149

SP Cup 2017 Statistics
In total, the teams from 20 different
countries participated in SP Cup 2017.
At the registration stage of the competition, 40 teams were involved with a total
of 279 participants. For the first part of
the open competition, 33 teams across
18 countries with more than 250 participants submitted musical excerpts (thus
adding 99 new examples to the initial
data set of 50 provided by the organizers). In the second part, which presented
a significant increase in difficulty and
submission requirements, 21 teams participated with 147 members spread
across 14 countries. The countries with
the most registrations were India with
eight and the United States with seven.
As in previous years, the SP Cup
was run as an online class on the Piazza
platform, which, in addition to allowing
continuous interaction with teams, also
hosted the test material supporting documentation. In total, 115 students registered for the course, with approximately
220 contributions and 2,500 views of
the posts. An archive of the class is
available at https://piazza.com/ieee_sps/
other/sp1701/home.
Since its inception, the SP Cup has
received generous support from MathWorks, Inc., the maker of the popular MATLAB and Simulink platforms.
MathWorks also provided funding
support to the SP Cup and contributed
their expertise. Each student team that
registered for the SP Cup was provided complimentary software access to
MATLAB and related toolboxes. After
discussion with the SP Cup organizers,
MathWorks provided skeleton code for
real-time audio using a Raspberry Pi,
which is available at http://au.mathworks.
com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/59825real-time-beat-tracking-templatesfor-ieee-signal-processing-cup-2017. The
IEEE SPS welcomes continued engagement and support from industry in future
SP Cup competitions. Interested supporters may contact Dr. Patrizio Campisi,
director for student services, at patrizio.
campisi@uniroma3.it.

Participants' feedback
Throughout the open competition there
was a great deal of interaction, not only

FIGURE 2. A Real-time beat-tracking assessment for the final competition: music was played from
the Bluetooth loudspeaker and recorded by three microphones, one for each team.

through questions for the instructors
posted to Piazza but also among the different student teams who often engaged
in discussion over the provided responses. Indeed, these interactions were critical in expanding the flexibility of the
evaluation script to correctly process
music in non-4/4 meters. As organizers,
we were delighted to see this collaborative spirit continue right through to the
preparation for ICASSP and the final
session itself. Next, we provide an overview of some feedback and perspectives
received from the three winning teams.

■

-Jeremy Bell, undergraduate
■

Team Beats on the Barbie
■

"The project itself was extremely
challenging. I worked on the software
implementation of the algorithm, and
to do this meant implementing the
hardware interface on an embedded
system. For me, the most challenging
part of the SP Cup was setting up
many different projects and libraries
that often had never been tested on an
embedded system to work in real
time and simultaneously. This required
running parts of the algorithm in different threads, modifying audio drivers, and writing low-level sound
architecture code. Having these components running at the same time, and
interacting with the hardware, was an
amazing feeling."
-Jeremy Bell, undergraduate
IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING MAGAZINE

July 2017

"I learned a lot about DSP while
working on the SP Cup, and since I
am undertaking more DSP courses
this semester, I feel more confident
in my ability to understand more
complicated concepts. I think my
future career will almost certainly
involve signal processing, so I will
take the skills I have learned in
DSP beyond university as well."

"I learned a lot about DSP algorithm
design in general. I am also more
confident in my understanding of
sound architectures in Linux. I think
I also learned a lot about teamwork,
and what it takes to get things done
under extreme time constraints."
-Jeremy Bell, undergraduate

■

"ICASSP was my first conference as
an undergraduate, and I found it
incredible. The amount of state-ofthe-art technology and innovative
creations was overwhelming, and it
was almost impossible to keep up
with in lectures. I was also surprised
by the number of social events that
occurred at the conference. It was
great to be able to interact with so
many talented and like-minded people on such a casual and friendly
basis throughout the conference."
-Jeremy Bell, undergraduate
149

https://www.piazza.com/ieee_sps/ http://www.au.mathworks

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