Amii’s Virtual AI Meetup Recap – April 22, 2021

On April 22, 2021, participants gathered digitally to watch and participate at the AI Meetup. The event featured:

Andy Wong – Machine Learning Scientist at Amii

One of the greatest challenges to the automated production of goods is equipment malfunction. In this talk, we explore different types of anomaly detection algorithms useful for condition-based maintenance (CBM) - specifically, data-driven methods for detecting when the machine is nearing failure. Depending on the availability of data - a choice of supervised, semi-supervised, or unsupervised anomaly detection methods needs to be made. Furthermore, we explore how to extend reinforcement learning (RL) methods for improving machine reliability, particularly when changing environments create false alarms.

After an introduction of the problem, we present some empirical results of applying different anomaly detection algorithms on a robotic arm dataset. We find that by using RL and leveraging the temporal aspect of data, we significantly improve the utility of anomaly detection algorithms for CBM. These findings move us towards more reliable methods to predictively allocate maintenance activities; saving resources in both time and money.

Spencer Murray – Director, Communications and Public Relations at Amii

As one of the longest active staff members at Amii, Spencer has first-hand experience in Canada’s AI ecosystem. Amii originally started as AICML (the Alberta Innovates Centre for Machine Learning) to advance research and development in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning – together called machine intelligence. Since the launch of the new brand in 2017, Amii continues to create, discover and guide the future of machine intelligence in Alberta and beyond. Spencer’s talk will cover his experiences working at Amii over the past 5 years, including major developments in research, training and industry engagement.

Thanks to all who were able to join us! If you missed our April Meetup, watch it now:

Join us on May 20 for our next Virtual AI Meetup! Register here.