Affected by the epidemic, the 2017 master's degree thesis defense of the School of Computer Science of Northwestern Polytechnical University adopted the online video method. On the morning of March 7, Muhammad Asif, an academic master's graduate student from Pakistan, together with the Chinese students of the research group of NPU-MINES Paris Tech Joint Laboratory for Robot and Swarm Intelligent Systems, successfully completed and passed the master's thesis defense, becoming the first foreign student of School of Computer Science to complete the defense in 2020. Strictly following the requirements of the school's "Notice on the Work Related to the Granting of Postgraduate Degree during the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia Outbreak Caused by the COVID-19", the defense and evaluation were carried out in accordance with unified standards. Professor Chen Qun of the School of Computer Science served as the chairman of the Expert Committee for Defense Evaluation, and Professor Miao Kejian, Associate Professor Zhang Kailong, Associate Professor Wu Xiao and Associate Professor Zheng Wei of the School of Software as the committee members. Associate Professor Yao Yuan acted as the Defense Secretary and Professor Gu Jianhua the supervisor. Also participating in the thesis defense were master students Wang Yujia, Li Liuyang, Fei Chao and Wu Liyuan.
Asif's thesis is entitled "Study and Design of an intelligent warehouse management system with cooperative mobile robots". Before the defense, Asif's paper also passed the blind peer review by the school and was allowed to directly participate in the thesis defense.
The defense procedures and relevant requirements for foreign students and Chinese students are exactly the same. Asif first read out the English version of the declaration about the originality of the thesis and reported his research work and related results. Then, the Defense Committee asked Asif questions about his research work and the contents of the paper, namely the simulation environment modeling, node load balancing and cooperative communication guarantee, and Asif answered them one by one. In the end, after careful discussion and voting by secret ballot, the Defense Committee unanimously agreed to pass Asif's defense and recommended granting him a master's degree in engineering.
Asif worked really hard and showed a positive attitude towards his learning during the postgraduate training period. He even did his scientific research in school both in winter and summer vacations. With continuous endeavor, he made comparative analysis on and optimized some of the existing solutions in the international market, and completed the system design and prototype system implementation of multi-robot cooperative storage system based on swarm intelligence system theory, ant colony algorithm and other technologies. This research not only improves the handling and transportation efficiency of unmanned warehouse, but also provides relevant mechanisms for path planning and collision avoidance. Finally, a prototype system of verification mechanism is implemented on NetBeans using Java, and the experimental results are analyzed from multiple aspects of task completion efficiency and message communication cost, etc. Asif's research topic closely fits the pain points of the applications of intelligent logistics in the fields of e-commerce and digital economy. The research results indicated that he has basically mastered the basic theory and expertise of this discipline and is eligible to engage in scientific research. At the same time, Asif has also established a deep friendship with and is popular among the teachers and classmates of the teaching-research office during his postgraduate study.
The above picture is a work created by Professor Zhang Kailong of this defense group, which embodies our best wishes to overcome the epidemic and embrace the colorful spring as soon as possible!
Written by: Li Liuyang, reviewed by: Xia Yong
