2019 AI Seminar Calls for New Mode of University-Enterprise Cooperation to Better Cultivate Talents in the New Era

On January 5-6th, the 2019 Seminar on AI and Intelligent Robot Technology/ Professional Group Development (AI Seminar for short) was held in Shenzhen, receiving positive responses from many universities, vocational colleges and enterprises across the country. More than 300 teachers and business representatives from over 100 well-known institutions and over 30 companies participated in the seminar.

In total, 14 brilliant speeches which focused on the education innovation in the new era of artificial intelligence were delivered in the two-day knowledge feast. Speakers are from renowned universities and enterprises, including Prof. Yuan Bo from Tsinghua University Shenzhen Graduate School, Dr. Gavin Paul from the University of Technology Sydney, Vice President Ma Xiaoming from Shenzhen Polytechnic, Dobot's CEO Jerry Liu, etc. Ajit Jaokar from Oxford University could not come to the seminar in person but prepared a warm welcome video to all the attendees.

Speech Highlight: A Successful Training Center for AI Talents

Dr. Gavin Paul gave a brilliant speech titled Preparing Students to Integrate Robots into Futuristic Advanced Manufacturing Applications. He is a senior lecturer at the School of Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering and a core member from the Centre for Autonomous Systems (CAS) at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS).

During his speech, Dr. Gavin first briefly introduced himself and the current status of CAS, where over 500 undergraduate mechatronics students have been taught in total. The CAS team has successfully developed autonomous robots for bridge maintenance and steel structure inspection, currently deployed in Sydney Harbour Bridge. Both teaching activities and fundamental researches on autonomous robots are carried out in CAS. So Dr. Gavin splits his time half to half for teaching and research and utilizes different types of robots from the market. Then he introduces the arrangement and assessment of subjects and the “Learning.Futures” strategy of UTS, including flip learning approach, authentic assessment, practice-oriented learning, and active learning.

Gavin Paul Giving a Speech

Dr. Gavin was originally an early adopter of Dobot on Kickstarter in 2015/2016. Then he and UTS purchased around 20 DOBOT Magician and integrated them into multiple projects for better teaching performances. At the end of the seminar, he showed some examples of his students using robotic arms as a tool to explore unlimited possibilities: board game player, automatic M&M sorter, etc., not only enhancing their abilities to tackle practical problems but also help students understand the complex principles of robots.

After the seminar, Dr. Gavin visited Dobot and exchanged views with technical engineers on the collaborative robots, which he shows great interest for research. Language challenges did not stop the shared passion for robotic technology from bonding them together. He also talked about the possibility of arranging future visits of his Ph.D. candidates as a means to better prepare them for future challenges.

Gavin Paul with Dobot's Staff

Reshaping Course and Launching Lab for AI

In order to satisfy the current and future needs of AI and robot talents, Ajit Jaokar created a new course in Data Science at Oxford University, naming it the Internet of Things Course. The course aims to create a new kind of talents that integrate knowledge of IoT and AI to solve real and practical problems, better suit the future needs of AI and robot industry.

Throughout the course, students will receive hands-on use of DOBOT during the course, which allows students to explore multiple deep learning models such as neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), convolutional neural networks (CNN) and reinforcement learning (RL) via robots. Detailed course information can be found at the official website of Oxford University.

Ajit Jaokar reckons that robotics today is not the same as assembly line robots of the industrial age because AI is impacting many areas of Robotics. Robots are becoming autonomous and context-aware – especially in their interaction with people. So he also launched an AI Lab, where his team can explore the above areas using the DOBOT Magician in London, in a way to react to the technological trends and lead in the new AI era.

Better Cultivate Talents in the New AI Era

At present, a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation in the world is in full swing. The emerging technologies represented by AI are increasingly integrated into various fields of economy and society and become the leading force to reshape the world and create a future for mankind. The development of the industry requires preparing adequate talents in advance. In order to promote the all-round integration of talent cultivation and industrial demands, universities at home and abroad have applied multiple methods including establishing AI specialties and robot labs, etc., and are committed to cultivating high-quality innovative talents and technical talents under new modes to enhance the core competitiveness of the industry.