THE ROBOT REVOLUTION
Muhammad Shafique is working to make sustainable technology accessible to everyone, with inventions ranging from driver assistance tools to cognitive robots with their own “tiny brains.”
The bustling city streets are alive with activity, the hum of robots blending seamlessly with the chatter of humans. The small, sleek machines scurry about on their assigned tasks, their “tiny brains” allowing them to learn and adapt with every encounter and experience.
It sounds like a scene from a sci-fi film, but this is what the future will look like according to Professor of Engineering Muhammad Shafique, whose groundbreaking research into brain-inspired computing and AI technology could bring this vision to a swift reality.
“AI and machine learning have proliferated our daily lives in almost every application already,” said Shafique. “We have wearables that are monitoring our daily lives, health diagnostics in our smart watches, autonomous vehicles, and traffic control systems. My research is all about bringing intelligence to real-world systems.”
Enabling future intelligent technologies and cognitive systems that care for humanity and the ecosystem in an energy-efficient and secure way is the key focus of Shafique’s eBRAIN lab at NYU Abu Dhabi. Shafique and his research team have been extensively investigating innovative foundations for next-generation AI systems that make technology safe, secure, and sustainable across every sector.
Shafique’s goal is to create accessible tech that can be used by everyone, regardless of income or location. His assistive robotics are designed to help and facilitate human life, while enabling AI-based intelligent functions on smartphones and mobile devices for different applications like healthcare and autonomous driving assistance.
“Nowadays the average person has four to five electronic devices and we’re talking about putting a very small electronic brain inside these components to enable intelligent technologies in 80 to 90 percent of computing devices in the world,” he said. “The robots and autonomous vehicles are to be used for people, with people, and we want to make it safe, secure, and accessible to everyone.”
One such smartphone system that Shafique and his students are currently developing is an advanced driver assistance tool that will make getting behind the wheel safer than ever before. The tool aims to detect danger in the most adverse weather conditions, recognizing oncoming vehicles during heavy fog, a leading cause of multiple-car pileups in the UAE. Currently, the system is being tested using scenarios in the virtual world, though Shafique hopes to progress to real-life driving situations soon.
Another ongoing project involves four-legged robots commonly used to explore disaster zones. As well as increasing their speed and efficiency, Shafique is working on developing their robust design and defenses against cyber attacks that can hack into the machines and use them maliciously.
Healthcare is also a priority for Shafique and his students, and a new multimillion-dollar AI project could potentially reduce miscarriages in pregnant women. The Moore4Medical EU Project in collaboration with Philips Healthcare aims to develop an intelligent handheld ultrasound device that will allow expectant mothers to monitor their pregnancy from home.
“With the help of these devices, we can perform various AI-based analysis functions, such as segmenting the fetus and analyzing their anatomical features to identify any potential anomalies,” said Shafique. “This empowers women to monitor their pregnancy and seek medical help before emergencies can arise.”
Muhammad Shafique, Professor of Engineering
Muhammad Shafique, Professor of Engineering
“I’ve seen a lot of cases where everything has appeared fine in ultrasounds but on the day of delivery there are complications. My goal is to advance this technology at NYU Abu Dhabi and build our own in-house intellectual property to make this care available to mothers-to-be everywhere.”
Elsewhere in the healthcare field, the lab’s Edge AI for Medical Image Processing tool aims to analyze X-ray images and other diagnostics on a laptop, a tablet, or even a mobile phone.
“Typically, only hospital doctors can run these complex image diagnostics on high-end servers in hospitals, but this technology could allow medics to travel to remote towns and villages in rural areas like South Asia and Africa where they don’t have sufficient resources or internet bandwidth,” said Shafique. “These small devices can take care of medical image analysis very quickly and hopefully save lives.”
As well as the human effect of his research, Shafique is firmly focused on environmental impact and aims to harness power for his tech from natural resources like sun and wind. By building zero-power devices that consume the same amount of power they generate, he hopes to significantly reduce his carbon footprint and leverage eco devices that propel the agriculture, automotive, and industrial sectors into the future.
As the technology continues to progress and learn, Shafique is confident that it will begin to think and act more independently. But he’s not losing any sleep over the “robot revolution.”
“There are checks on the cognition of machines because we cannot afford these systems to be 100 percent as intelligent or out of control as humans, because we have morals which you cannot simply program for such machines,” said Shafique.
“My ultimate goal is to make technology that can help people, not replace them.”
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