Xiamen University Malaysia (XMUM) held the very first session of “AI+” Talk Series, an event organized by XMUM Institute of Artificial Intelligence, on 7 March 2019. The Institute will invite local and international experts to visit XMUM with the aims of:

1. Promoting cutting edge thinking and practices in AI among faculty members and students of different areas;

2. Exploring research and innovation topics through academic endeavours;

3. Facilitating ideas exchange on AI concept and its application (hence “AI+”).

In near future, XMUM aims to become one of the leading local institutions in AI and its application.

The first talk was given by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Wang Han from School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He was a member in Oxford Robotics Research Group before joining NTU. His research interests include computer vision, AI and robotics. Dr. Wang is currently serving as Chair of IEEE Robotics and Automation, Singapore Chapter, and an associate editor of a few international journals.

Dr. Wang delivered a talk entitled “Artificial Intelligence and Applications in Computer Vision”, which aroused warm responses from the audience. The talk started with an analysis of deep reinforcement learning for robot navigation. He mentioned that robots are capable of learning steering via deep reinforcement learning automatically, while conventional learning methods typically rely on search algorithms such as A-star to find open space via geometric measurements of the environment. He shared his work on proposing a novel end-to-end network architecture for mobile robots to learn image-based autonomous steering in complex environments through deep reinforcement learning. In addition, Dr. Wang shared his knowledge on stereo-based vision algorithms for mobile robot navigation, as well as learning-based algorithm for human age estimation.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Wang Han shared his research works in NTU.

The talk was followed by a lively Q&A session, during which XMUM students asked questions enthusiastically, showing their interest in AI area. The talk by Dr. Wang provided students with a better understanding of AI and its applications and a good opportunity for them to do further exploration.

Established in 2019, XMUM Institute of Artificial Intelligence hopes to serve as a multi-disciplinary platform for academic staff and students to develop their AI research through integration and ideas exchange, featuring collaborative education, research and innovation across the campus, which shall promote AI research at XMUM.