With the aim to promote mutual learning and collaboration as well as to encourage research and development activities, a bilateral symposium between UTAR and Universitas Multimedia Nusantara (UMN), Indonesia was held at UTAR Kampar Campus on 08 November 2019.

Organised for the first time by the Centre for Information Systems and Software Technologies (CISST), parked under the Faculty of Information and Communication Technology (FICT), the one-day UTAR and UMN Bilateral Symposium saw the participation of over 20 prolific researchers from both Indonesia and Malaysia sharing their insights and latest research findings in the areas of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). 

Led by Chairperson of CISST Dr Ng Hui Fuang, the UMN delegation was welcomed by the Dean of FICT Assoc Prof Ts Dr Liew Soung Yue, Deputy Director of Division of Community and International Networking (DCInterNet) Dr Chen I-Chi, FICT academics and UTAR staff.

Welcoming the delegates from UMN and the other participants of the symposium in his speech, Organising Chairperson-cum-Chairperson of CISST Dr Ng said, “Welcome to UTAR Kampar Campus and we are indeed glad to have a group of prolific researchers as far from Indonesia to share their research findings and insights with us today. I hope the bilateral ties between the two universities will continue with positive and productive collaboration in the future.”

Introducing UTAR as a fast-growing university, offering quality yet affordable education and encouraging R&D activities which will benefit the society, Dr Liew in his speech emphasised, “Amid the Fourth Industrial Revolution in this 21st century, we are faced with the transforming platforms across all industries, namely multimedia, businesses, trades, education and more. This may sound intimidating but we believe the Fourth Industrial Revolution is also an opportunity for us to explore various ideas, developments and to make use of the new technologies to be innovative with solutions to solve real-world problems. Therefore I hope, with this symposium, we can all understand the diverse knowledge that is related to the current trend and work together towards greater research opportunities.”

The symposium kick-started with the first research presentation by a researcher from UMN Arya Wicaksana on “Quantum Computing and Artificial Intelligence in UMN”. His research focused on Quantum algorithms which are well-known for their quadratic if not exponential speedup over their classical counterparts. In his paper, he presented a novel way to realise the two algorithms into a web application using state-of-art quantum technology. The web-app is designed and built considering the uses of quantum simulator and libraries provided by ProjectQ and Rigetti Forest. The result shows that both algorithms are realisable into web-app.

It was followed by the next research presentation by Dr Tan Hung Koon from UTAR FICT who presented on “Classification of Thoracic Diseases Using Chest X-Ray Images”. Dr Tan explained, “Thoracic diseases are one of the deadliest diseases in the world. The demands and workloads of chest x-ray diagnosis have increased significantly in recent years. There is a need for a system that performs automated diagnosis of thoracic diseases from chest x-ray images. Building such a system with robust performance needs a lot of annotated chest x-ray images data. Unfortunately, in reality, most of the chest x-ray datasets are noisy as the labels were extracted from radiology reports automatically. Most existing deep learning methods ignore the noises in the chest x-ray image data.” He further added, “In this work, we developed a thoracic disease classifier under noisy condition.”

The third speaker was Nunik Afriliana from UMN and she presented her research presentation on “Computer Assisted and Systematic Methodology for Detection of Chronic Lower Back Pain (CLBP) Using Artificial Intelligence and Computer Graphics Technologies”. She presented, “Lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) is the narrowing of spinal canal caused by inflammation of bone or soft tissues, which in turn produces pressure on spinal nerve roots. This pressure could result in CLBP with symptoms ranging from radicular pain to a typical leg pain to neurogenic claudication. Currently, there is no existing solution to assist physicians in their task of identifying the cause of CLBP. They have to manually go through a series of MRIs and view them from different views.” She added, “This research utilised existing Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning techniques to scan the images and present the physicians with the location of areas of interest which they can review hence improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the overall diagnosis process. The proposed methodology will be using the properties of the MRIs to detect spinal disc areas and detect any presence of LSS from the shape of the discs.”

This was followed by another research presentation by UTAR FICT Dr Vasaki Ponnusamy who presented on “An Overview of Data Communications in Intelligent Transportation System (ITS)”. She said “In the modern manufacturing plants, autonomous AGV system has been widely adopted, leading to high production rate and efficiency. The localisation of AGV is important as it will largely influence the entire manufacturing system. For example, if an AGV stops operating in the middle of transporting goods, the other vehicles will need to spend extra waiting time for the arrival of goods as well as for the path to be cleared. Besides, the faulty vehicle may also cause obstruction or accidents to other vehicles and cause a delay on the whole production and manufacturing activities. Hence, in this paper, a review paper on the techniques for indoor localisation of AGV is presented. It also included the advantages and disadvantages of the respective techniques for a better understanding of the localisation of AGV.”

Dr Friska Natalia from UMN presented her presentation on “Modelling of Flood Potential Detection Systems in Tangerang”. She explained, “Floods are the most common natural disaster and the leading cause of natural disaster mortality worldwide. Indonesian Disaster Data and Information in 2018 showed that the most common disaster in Indonesia is flooding. Flood control will become an ever-increasing issue in many countries.” Her research explored the flood patterns and she used three variables, namely water level, river and stations to design and make the application detect the flood that occurred one hour ahead in Tangerang, Bekasi, and Depok based on double exponential smoothing method and fuzzy logic method. Besides, this application can help the community in reporting flood disaster and informing potential flood information that would occur in the next hour to the people of that area using broadcast message via email and SMS Gateway.

Meanwhile, Ts Dr Lee Chen Kang from UTAR FICT presented on “Enhancing Students’ Learning Experience in Tertiary Education: The Role of Computer Assisted Learning Software/Technologies in Blended Learning Environment”. He explained, “The paradigm shift in tertiary education in response to the revolution of Education 4.0 has created new challenges for education practitioners. The utilisation of ICT to facilitate the teaching and learning in tertiary education specifically in engineering education has increasingly raised the interest of the education practitioners.”

Last but not least, Dareen Kusuma Halim from UMN presented on “Introducing Multiprocessor Development into Arduino Environment”. He explained, “Internet of Things (IoT) technology has found more applications that require complex computation while still preserving power. Embedded processors as the core of the IoT system approaches the need for computation by employing a parallel processor system, namely MPSoC.”

The symposium came to an end with a certificate presentation ceremony to participants and a group photograph session.