Anis Qubaa is a researcher with multiple interests. His scientific and research career started from Tunisia, and he is currently continuing in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where he holds the position of Director of the Center for Research and Initiatives and Head of the Robotics and Internet of Things Laboratory at Prince Sultan University.
Qubaa tried to diversify his scientific experiences through trips that extended him geographically to reach Portugal, by joining as a research associate at the Center for Research in Real Time and Embedded Computing Systems (CISTER) since 2006 until today. He also had work experience in China as a consultant for a company Gaitech Robotics between 2016 and 2019.
The Professor in Computer Science works on several research and development projects in data science, unmanned systems, deep learning, robotics, and the Internet of Things.
Prof. Anis Qubaa has won many honors, and provided many training programs on drones, data science, Python programming, deep learning and other technologies, and he is known for his series of courses and books on the Robot Operating System (ROS).
The last coronation of Anis Qubaa (right) at the Artificial Intelligence Exhibition that was held recently in Riyadh (communication sites)
The "eyes" system and artificial intelligence
Anis Qubaa received the Rector's Award for Best Professor in 2016 at Prince Sultan University, and the Best Research Award in 2012 at Al-Imam University, and was selected - in December 2020 - in Stanford University's list of the best 2% of scientists in the world.
Among his latest honors, he was awarded the Leadership Award in Artificial Intelligence at the Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Computing Exhibition, which was held in Riyadh from May 22 to 24 last, thanks to the "eyes" system that recognizes people and vehicles in real time.
Professor Anis Qubaa says that the "Oyoon" program is an integrated monitoring system using artificial intelligence that enables the integration of any non-intelligent camera into the system to discover objects of interest and send them to the cloud to store the detected objects and then process the data through web interfaces, or through a mobile phone.
The professor adds that the system quickly processes and analyzes images through performance-optimized algorithms for deep learning and artificial intelligence on ultra-small edge devices.
Eyes applications that have been tried at the entrances to Prince Sultan University and the entrances to parking lots to automate car entry (Al-Jazeera)
Anis Qubaa explains that his research team has developed 3 applications on this system. The first relates to automatic recognition of people from the face, so the face is captured and the identity of the person, the place and the time in which it was discovered, allowing it to be used in security and safety applications, as well as automatic monitoring in sensitive facilities. and others.
As for the second application, it works to identify cars through the shape. Once a car or vehicle is discovered, the brand and model of the car, as well as the year of manufacture, can be identified. At the present time, it can accurately identify 200 types of cars with a rate of 98%.
While the third application enables automatic identification of vehicles through the license plate, the system has been trained on Saudi license plates, and the detection of Arabic and English letters and numbers with high accuracy.
Applications have been tested at Prince Sultan University entrances and parking entrances to automate the entry of authorized cars into parking lots.
Eye system that recognizes cars by shape (Al Jazeera)
Vehicle movement during Hajj and Umrah
Professor Anis Qubaa said, "Last year, we participated in the Oyoun system in an international competition organized by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, in which more than 1,300 teams from companies and universities around the world participated, and we won first place in the field of movement and mobility to facilitate the movement of vehicles during the Hajj and Umrah seasons."
Anis explains that the mobility challenge system or "KAUST" challenge aims to automate bus and vehicle permits to reach religious rites areas such as Mina, Muzdalifah and Arafa, and improve the experience of movement during Hajj and Umrah, indicating that the challenge includes 3 tracks: health care, transportation and transportation. And managing regiments is part of the efforts to transform Makkah into a smart city.
He explains, “Our goal was to provide better transportation services for pilgrims by reducing bus and vehicle delays in queues, and to improve pilgrims’ safety and security by digitizing law enforcement to prevent intrusive intruders and unauthorized persons from gaining access to ritual venues.”
The purpose behind this was to replace the manual checkpoint with automated verification of vehicles and buses using artificial intelligence, which would reduce verification times, thus avoiding traffic jams at checkpoints, as is the case every year.
The Roslink protocol contributed to the development of an artificial intelligence-powered drone system (Al-Jazeera)
Seamless connection with drones
“I invented the ROSLink protocol, to allow seamless communication of unmanned systems (drones and service robots) over the Internet to be monitored and controlled by end users through cloud systems,” says Professor Kouba.
The professor notes that this protocol has led to the development of several commercial products, including an AI-powered drone system that works over 5G networks for delivery and inspection.
It also led to the development of a fleet management system for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) to automate logistics and warehousing.
According to Prof. Qubaa, the "Roslink" protocol is based on a three-tiered architecture that includes the automated system, the cloud and the end user. The cloud acts as an agent between the robotic systems and end users and provides system intelligence to manipulate, monitor and control the robots according to the requirements of the applications.
In addition, Roslink's architecture and service-oriented architecture allow unmanned systems to communicate not only with a web browser over the Internet, but also with mobile applications through web services and middleware.
Moreover, it enables heavy computational operations (such as computer vision and deep learning) to be discharged from unmanned battery power.
Qubaa is working with his team to create an artificial intelligence-powered drone system (Al-Jazeera)
Qubaa believes that these products are attractive to investors, given the size of the market for logistics applications that use unmanned aerial and ground systems in the region.
Scientific research in Arabic: fun and richness
Professor Anis Qubaa enriched the scientific library with many books, research and training courses in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence, and published some of his research and scientific papers in Arabic, an approach that Arab researchers rarely adopt in modern scientific fields.
The professor points out that he chose to diversify his books and publications, and that he took the initiative to enrich the Arab scientific content with an important publication, the book "Wireless Sensors Networks" in Arabic.
Qubaa says, "It was an enjoyable and rich experience from which I learned a lot, and while writing a scientific book in Arabic was one of the most difficult projects I implemented and took great time and effort, it was nonetheless one of the experiences that I benefited the most."
"Unfortunately, the Arabic scientific content is very few, and it is marginal compared to the content published in English and other languages," he added.
In this context, it is proposed to adopt the Arabic language as an official language in Arab universities alongside English, and to enhance the use of scientific terms in the Arabic language, which would push the translation and authorship movements in Arabic, and thus stimulate publishing houses to invest in Arabic scientific content.
It aims to convert theoretical research into real, tangible applications (Al-Jazeera)
So that scientific projects do not remain in the drawers
Prof. Anis Qubaa asserts that among his goals is to transform theoretical research carried out by researchers in universities into real, tangible applications that serve the community, attract investors, and contribute to achieving financial returns for the university and advancing the economy.
In this context, he says, "We are now working on various applications resulting from our research, including the realization of an AI-powered drone system through 5G networks for delivery and inspection, the development of a fleet management system for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) to automate logistics and warehouse services, in addition to the development of a system for eyes and marketing.
He adds, "I want to change the stereotypical view of universities that they only produce theoretical research that has nothing to do with reality, which represents a gap between universities and between the industrial sector, the private sector and the business sector."